The National Assembly will transmit the 2022 budget passed by both chambers to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent today.
Senate President Ahmad Lawan disclosed this in his remarks before the chamber proceeded on recess.
The Senate yesterday passed the 2022 budget estimates of N17,126,873,917,692.00.
The amount was N735, 850,000,000 higher than the N16,391,023,917,692.00 President Muhammdu Buhari presented to the joint session of the National Assembly on October 10, 2021.
The passage of the 2022 Appropriation Bill followed the consideration of the report of the Senate Committee on Appropriation by the upper chamber at plenary.
The chairman of the Committee, Senator Barau Jibrin, gave the highlights of the budget to include: Aggregate expenses of N17,126,873,917,692.00, Statutory Transfer – N869,667,187,542.00, Recurrent Expenditure – N6,909,849,788,737.00, Capital Expenditure – N5,467,403,959,863.00 and Debt Service – N3,879,952,981,550.00.
Jibrin said the revenue projection for the 2022 budget was predicated on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework/Fiscal Strategy Paper approved by the National Assembly.
He recalled that the National Assembly had approved 1.88mbpd Daily Oil Production and $62 as against $57 proposed by the executive arm of government.
He explained that the increase in oil price Benchmark from $57 to $62 was done to reflect the current market value in the international market.
He added that the exchange rate was pegged at N410.15/$1, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate at 4.2 and Inflation rate at 13 per cent.
The Committee in its recommendations stated that additional revenues discovered should be provided to the Works and Housing Ministry for funding of critical projects, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for the 2023 General Elections, Defence and the National Population Commission for the 2022 Population Census.
It added that N98 billion increase in deficit should be approved to take care of some of the additional requests from the executive arm of government.
A breakdown of recurrent expenditure shows that N61,079,757,342 is earmarked for the Presidency in 2022, N996,09 1,292,618 for Defence, N79,243,483,198 for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, N55,796,274,038 for Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, N257,626,461,524 for Ministry of Interior.
