N/Assembly increases budget by N508bn

The National Assembly has increased the 2018 budget by N508 billion from N8.6 trillion to N9.1 trillion.

This was contained in the 2018 budget reports laid on the floors of the Senate and the House of Representatives yesterday. The increase represents over five percent of the proposed budget.

Chairmen of the appropriations committees in the Senate and Reps, Senator Mohammed Danjuma Goje (APC, Gombe) and Mustapha Bala Dawaki (APC, Kano) presented the reports.

The two chambers are expected to pass the budget this week.

The lawmakers have also raised the oil benchmark from $45 per barrel of crude proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari to $50.5pb.

President Buhari had on November 7, 2017 presented the 2018 budget proposal in which he said out of the N8.6tr, recurrent expenditure would gulp N3.4tr, while capital projects got N2.6tr.

The budget projected exchange rate of N305 per dollar and daily crude oil production output of 2.51 million barrels per day.

It was gathered that the two chambers maintained the proposed exchange rate and the daily production output.

However, the recurrent expenditure has been raised to N3.5tr, while capital expenditure is now N2.8tr.

Debt servicing had proposal of N2.02tr, National Assembly has raised it to N2.2tr.

Other components of the budget reports are N530.421bn for statutory transfers and N190bn for sinking fund for maturing loans. a the now