Why NASS jerked up 2024 budget – Reps

The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, has explained how the 2024 budget of N28.77 trillion passed by the National Assembly on Saturday was processed.

The National Assembly, on Saturday, passed a budget of N28, 777, 404, 073,861 for the 2024 fiscal year.

The budget, which was passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, after the report of the Appropriation Committees in the two chambers had an increase of about N1. 2 trillion.

President Bola Tinubu, in the Appropriation Bill, presented to the joint session of the National Assembly on November 29, 2023 proposed a total of N27.5 trillion.

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Chairman, House Committee on Appropriations, Hon. Abubakar Bichi, while giving a synopsis of the Appropriation Bill, explained that the committee held a one-way town hall meeting to get the inputs of citizens on the Appropriation Bill, noting however that the presentation of the budget by the end of November was not in sync with extant law, which requires the Appropriation Bill to be presented to the parliament three months to the end of a fiscal year.

According to him, the late presentation of the Appropriation Bill put pressure on the committee in processing the 2024 budget.

Bichi, while fielding questions from journalists, explained that the N1. 2 trillion increase was because of inflation, as well as a promise by Government Owned Enterprises (GOEs) to increase their revenue to N700 billion.

He said, “We have inflation and exchange rate for the dollar, the executive proposed N750 to the dollar, but after we studied carefully, we looked at it, it is unrealistic.

“So we increased it to N800. And also we had a meeting with the GOEs, we believe that their submissions are not enough. They have agreed to increase their revenue. That is how we are able to get that 1.2 trillion, which we applied to capital.

“This is the first time the capital is bigger than recurrent. We appropriated about N850 billion, education, we gave them a lot of money. I believe this budget is brilliant and Nigerians will see a lot of impacts”.