President Buhari During The Presentation Of
2016 Budget To NASS
President Muhammadu Buhari has signed the
2016 budget into law.
The president’s assent to the budget is
coming weeks after horse-trading between
the presidency and the national assembly.
In April, the national assembly transmitted
details of the budget to the president after it
had passed the bill on March 23.
But the president returned the document to
the national assembly on the grounds that
there were “grey areas” in it that needed to be
sorted out.
The legislature then constituted a 10-man
committee to smooth out the contours.
After a few weeks of legislative treatment, the
final copy of the document was transmitted
to the president on Thursday.
And, on Friday, he signed it into law.
In December, the budget proposal presented
to a joint session of the national assembly by
Buhari was N6.07trn. A total of N351bn was
for statutory transfers, N2.8trn for recurrent
expenditure and N1. 8trn for capital
expenditure.
The legislature, based on the
recommendation of its committees on
appropriation, adopted $38 per barrel crude
oil benchmark for the budget, as proposed by
the federal government. It also adopted a
foreign exchange rate of N197 per dollar as
proposed by the government.
It, however, reduced the total budget sum
from N6.07trn to N6.06trn: N351bn for
statutory transfers, N1.4trn for debt service,
N2.6trn for recurrent expenditure, and
N1.5trn as capital expenditure.
