Five months after it was presented by the Minister of Finance/Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Senate, Tuesday, passed the 2015 budget .
However, the N4.493trn 2015 budget was N51bn higher than the N4.425tr submitted to the National Assembly by the Federal Government.
A careful study of the approved budget showed the removal of the controversial fuel subsidy .The document however made provision for N21bn for the funding of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).
The Senate, in passing the budget, slightly reduced the N2.607, 601, 000, 300 proposed by the executive to N2.607, 132,491,708 as recurrent expenditure and simultaneously scaled down the capital expenditure from N642, 848,999,699 estimated in the proposal to N556,995,465,449.
The chairman, Joint Senate Committee on Appropriation and Finance, Mohammed Maccido, said the details of the figure approved by senate in the document were not different from the version passed by the House of Representatives last week.
Confirming that no provision was made for petroleum subsidy in the 2015 budget and that the National Assembly left it the way it was presented, Maccido said, “There was no provision in the budget for subsidy but I believe there should be provision for it, especially since there was already, a disagreement between the oil marketers and the federal government over subsidy payment.”
He disclosed further that the budget will be driven by $53 oil benchmark, an exchange rate of N190.00 to one dollar; 2.2782m per barrel crude oil production per day; and deficit gross domestic product of -1.12 per cent.
