WorldStage Newsonline– Nigeria’s House of Representatives passed the N13.6 trillion 2021 budget on Monday in Abuja while the Senate passed the 2021 Appropriation Bill of N13.5 trillion..
President Muhammadu Buhari presented a budget of N13.08 trillion to the joint session of the National Assembly on Oct. 8.
The Reps’ passage followed the adoption of a report by the House Committee on Appropriation, laid by its Chairman, Rep Aliyu Betara (APC-Borno) at the Committee of Supply.
He said the Bill is to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the sum of N13,588,027,886,175 of which N496.5 billion is for statutory transfers
He added that N3.3 billion is for debt servicing, while N5.6 trillion is for recurrent non-debt expenditure.
Betara added that N4.1 trillion is for contribution to the Development Fund for capital expenditure for 2021.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, said that 9th National Assembly passed the budget in record time to keep to the promise made during its inauguration.
“We will maintain this tempo so that our successors can continue from where we stopped,’’ he said.
Similarly, the Senate on Monday passed the 2021 Appropriation Bill of N13.5 trillion followed the adoption of the report of Senate Committee on Appropriations at plenary.
Presenting the report, Chairman of the Committee Sen. Barau Jibril(APC-Kano), said that the committee was guided by the revenue parameters approved by the National Assembly in preparing the budget.
Jibrin said that the budget was made up of N5.6 trillion recurrent expenditure and N4.1 trillion capital expenditure.
He said that N496 billion of the budget was for Statutory Transfer, while N3.3 trillion was for debt service.
He said the committee adopted 40 dollars per barrel crude oil price benchmark as proposed by the Executive at 1.86mbpd, while exchange rate of N379 was adopted with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) assumption of 3.00 per cent as presented by the executive.
He said that the committee, while processing the budget considered the impact of COVID-19 pandemic that has negatively affected virtually every aspect of life, businesses, individuals and revenue profile of government.
He, however, said in view of the increasing global oil price beyond the benchmark of 40 dollars, the executive may wish to submit a Supplementary Appropriation Bill whenever it deemed fit.
Jibrin said that this would help fund critical areas that would help to accelerate movement of the economy out of recession.
Meanwhile, the Senate and t he House have adjourned plenary session to Jan. 26, 2021.
