Senate, House of Reps pass 2020 budget

The Senate and the House of Representatives have passed the 2020 Appropriation Bill. The N10.594 trillion budget was passed at the senate after the consideration of the report of the Senate Committee on Appropriations as presented by the Chairman, Senator Barau Jibrin, All Progressives Congress, APC, Kano North.
The passage according to the Senate is to return to December to January budget cycle and to ensure that there is certainty in the budget. The passed budget was jerked by N264 billion, just as the benchmark oil price was increased from the US $ 55 to US$57. The Crude Oil price as proposed by President Buhari was not touched as the Crude Oil Production of 2 18mbper barrel was retained, GDP Growth Rate retained at 2.93% same as Inflation Rate of 10.81% and Exchange Rate of 305 USS$1.
After the consideration of the report, it was read the third time and passed. Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari had on October 8, presented a budget proposal of N10.33trn to a joint session of the National Assembly for consideration and subsequent approval.
The 2020 Budget which is tagged ” Budget of Sustaining Growth and Job Creation” has a total budget estimate which is 1.4 trillion higher than that of 2019 which was 8.9 trillion naira. Highlights of the Bill shows Aggregate expenditure as IO,594,3 62,364,830; Statutory Transfers is 560,470, 827,235; Recurrent Expenditure is 4,842,974,600,640; Capital Expenditure is 2,465,418,006,955; Debt servicing is 2,725,498,930,000; Fiscal Deficit is 2.28 Trillion and Deficit /GDP is 1.52%.
“It is important to state that the Committee worked harmoniously with the Executive arm of government in the processing of this bill which ensured the collaboration of the two arms in the utilisation of additional revenue projections to fund/improve the funding of some critical projects which could not be adequately funded in the budget proposals submitted by Mr President due to constraints.
“Consequently, the increase allowed for interventions in critical areas such as National Security, Road Infrastructure, Mines and Steel Development, Health, Social needs, and Water, among others.
“This is also in line with the budget thrust of Government which is focused on growing development and sustainable growth”, Barau Jibrin said.
In the same vein, the House of Representatives has passed the 2020 budget of 10,594,362,364,830 naira. During plenary on Thursday, the lawmakers insisted that the budget will run from 1st January to 31st December 2020, thereby returning the country to the January to December budget cycle.
In the budget, the ministry of works gets the highest capital allocation of 315,563,564,269 while education gets a capital budget of 84,728,529,572. The health sector follows closely with a capital budget of 59,909,430,837. The national assembly also increased its budget from 125 billion to 128 billion.