Revised 2020 budget scales second reading in NASS

The National Assembly yesterday passed the revised 2020 budget for second reading after exhaustive debate.

The budget is being reviewed following the crash of oil price due to COVID-19 pandemic.

The budget was slashed from N10.594trn to N10.509trn.

In the revised budget, the earlier approved N2.453trn for debts servicing in the 2020 fiscal year is now N2.951trn.

Other critical components of the newly proposed

N10.509trn budget are N398.505bn as statutory transfers , N4.928.525trillion as recurrent expenditure and N2.230.912trillion as capital expenditure. President Muhammadu Buhari, in a separate letters to both Chambers of the National Assembly, said the newly proposed N10 .509trillion is predicated on oil price benchmark of $25per barrel as against $57per barrel fixed for the earlier one.

Other underlying assumptions of the revised budget are 1.93million barrels oil production per day as against 2.3million barrel oil production per day earlier appproved, exchange rate of N360 to a US dollar as against N305 to a US dollar earlier passed and approved.

Buhari explained further that aggregate revenue for funding the now revised 2020 budget is N5.09trillion which is 35% or N2.78trillion less than the one passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by him in December 2019. The revised fiscal document was referred to the committees on Finance and Appropriations and report back to the plenary next Tuesday.