The Senate will approve the 2018 to 2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) this week.
The development comes as the debate on general principles of the N8.612 trillion 2018 appropriation bill, earlier scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday this week, has been shifted to Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
MTEF/FSP provides the parameters upon which the budget is prepared. According to the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the fiscal documents must be approved before the budget is considered.
Senate President Bukola Saraki who announced this at Tuesday plenary, explained that the postponement of the budget debate is to enable the upper legislative chamber approve the MTEF/FSP before commencement of debate on the 2018 budget estimates.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun; his counterpart in Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma; Director General Budget Office, Ben Akabueze and DG Debt Management Office (DMO) Patience Oniha are expected to appear before the Joint Committee on Finance, Appropriations and National Planning today for an interactive session on MTEF/FSP.
Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari had on November 7, presented to a joint session of the National Assembly a budget estimate of N8.612 trillion for the 2018 fiscal year.
The proposed N8.612 trillion aggregate expenditure comprises recurrent costs of N3.494 trillion; debt service of N2.014 trillion; statutory transfers of about N456 billion; sinking fund of N220 billion (to retire maturing bond to local contractors) as well as capital expenditure of N2.652 trillion, representing 30.8 percent of the budget.
In his budget presentation, President Buhari had called for expeditious passage of the budget by December 31, 2017, to return to a more predictable January to December budget cycle.
However, Saraki did not give a firm commitment on whether the National Assembly would pass the budget estimates by December 31st.
“The early passage of the 2018 budget will depend on this good working relationship (between the President and lawmakers)”, the Senate President had said.
But in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay last week, Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, John Enoh, assured that the upper legislative chamber is committed to quick passage of MTEF/FSP.
His words: “We will take the agencies (at the interactive session) as quickly as possible and after we take them, we will come out with our report. So, everybody is concerned that we need to handle this and treat it with dispatch”.
The key parameters and assumptions for the 2018 budget with a deficit of N2.005 trillion include an oil benchmark of $45 per barrel, oil production estimate of 2.3 million barrels per day, exchange rate of N305/$1, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP ) growth of 3.5 percent and an inflation rate of 12.4 percent.
