PMB Set To Sign 2019 Budget Today

Ahead of his inauguration on Wednesday for a second term in office, President Muhammadu Buhari will today sign the 2019 Appropriation Bill into law.

Among those expected to witness the event holding at the State House, Abuja are the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara.

The signing of the budget bill, according to his schedule, is among the series of activities the president will carry out today.

Last month, the Senate and the Lower House unanimously raised the budget from N8.826 trillion to N8.916 trillion.

The amount approved by the National Assembly is N90billion higher than the N8.826 trillion President Buhari laid before the lawmakers in December 2018.

Before the harmonisation of the budget, the House of Representatives had approved N8.906 trillion while the Senate passed N8.916 trillion.

The National Assembly also increased the deficit budget proposed by Buhari from N1.86trillion to N1.908 trillion. The passage of the budget came after the consideration and adoption of the report submitted by National Assembly Committees on Appropriations.

In the upgraded budget, the National Assembly allocated the sum of N2.094 trillion to capital expenditure, recurrent expenditure got N4.055 trillion, statutory transfers N502 billion, fiscal deficit was raised to N1.908 trillion (1.37 per cent), special intervention fund N500 billion and deficit to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 1.37 percent.

In passing the budget, the National Assembly adopted the Medium Term Expenditure Framework/Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) with 2.3million barrel per day (bpd) oil production, $60 per barrel as oil price benchmark; N305/$1 as the exchange rate.