The National Assembly has finally passed the 2019 budget. The move comes 4 months after President Buhari presented the budget at a joint sitting of both chambers in December last year.
Its approved sum of N8,916,964,099,373 (Eight Trillion, Nine Hundred and Sixteen Billion, Nine Hundred and Sixty Four Million, Ninety Nine Thousand, Three Hundred and Seventy Three Naira only) is N86 billion higher than the President’s proposal of N8.83 trillion. The increase has been attributed to the provision of severance packages of out-going going legislators that will be exiting the 8th Assembly at its dissolution in June 2019, legislatives aides in the new Assembly and for the orientation exercise that held in in April, 2019 for newly elected/ returning legislators. The figure also reflects a consensus by both chambers to allocate N10 billion for service wide votes as Federal Government’s intervention in Zamfara State.
Other highlights of the passed Budget include:
- Statutory Transfers- N502,058,892,965
- Debt Service- N2,254,014,113,092
- Recurrent (Non-Debt) – N4,065,840,383,684
- Capital Expenditure – N2,094,950,709,632
- Deficit to GDP- 37%
- Special Intervention – N500,000,000,000