Move to rejig laws setting up thieving agencies
Approves fresh N4.28trn borrowing
By Tordue Salem – Abuja
As President Muhammadu Buhari plans to lay the 2021 budget before the National Assembly next week, the House of Representatives on Wednesday, approved the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP).
Part of the details of projections for the 2021 fiscal year as presented before the House by the joint committee on finance, appropriations, national planning, and economic development, oil production has been put at 1.86 million barrels per day, at an international crude oil benchmark price of $40 per barrel.
The exchange rate has been projected at $379 to the naira, a GDP growth projection of 3.00 percent, and an inflation rate at 11:95 percent.
Other fiscal measures in the document, include a planned new borrowing (both domestic and foreign) of N4.28 trillion, special interventions (recurrent) of N350 billion, special interventions (capital) of N20 billion, and a projected fiscal deficit of N5.20 trillion.
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Explaining further, the Chairman of the finance committee, Rep. James Faleke, disclosed that” the total federal government aggregate expenditure was projected at N13.08 trillion”.
The committee in its report, however, accused the majority of revenue-generating agencies of engaging in “arbitrary and frivolous expenditure, making it difficult to determine actual federal government revenue, with a large percentage of this expenditure including huge paternal costs that was difficult to reconcile with the number of staff on their nominal payroll”.
The Committee, therefore, recommended that the House should, as a matter of urgency, review the laws establishing revenue-generating agencies, to conform with the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, as well as the Act itself in section 21 and 22 with the current expenditure to revenue ratio as issued by the presidency in a circular.
A joint session of the National Assembly is billed to receive estimates of the 2021 budget next week.
