The House of Representatives on Wednesday, September 30 approved the 2021/2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP). This comes as President Muhammadu Buhari prepares to physically present the Appropriation Bill for the 2021 national budget on the floor of the National Assembly.
The parametres for the 2021 national budget, as contained in the document show that crude oil production is pegged at 1.86 barrels a day, at a price of $40 per barrel. The projected exchange rate of the naira to the dollar is N379 to $1. The total amount for proposed foreign and domestic loans stands at N4.28 trillion, while the projected fiscal deficit of the budget is N5.20 trillion. The total proposed expenditure is set at N13.08 trillion while revenue is N7.89 trillion.
The House Committee on Finance in its report, attributed the difficulty in accounting for actual government revenue to the “arbitrary and frivolous expenditure” of revenue generating agencies of government. The Committee therefore recommended that the House of Representatives review the laws establishing such agencies, with a view to bringing them into conformity with the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 and in turn, ensuring that the Act conforms with the prevailing expenditure to revenue ratio, as issued by the presidency. It also recommended that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government should be analysed with a view to identifying MDAs that can be taken off the budget wholly or partially and those that should be retained, in order to ease the deficit burden.