The Federal Government has announced its intention to return the N27.5 trillion 2024 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly.
The decision was based on the possibility of increased revenue, which would necessitate a larger budget.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of Economy, Mr Wale Edun highlighted improvement in the economy as the reason behind this move.
Edun said:
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“The revenue performance was encouraging, it is expected to continue to be encouraging. There is fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work. It is meant to provide fundamental change together with digitalization, greater efficiency in collection because it revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.
“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will come back and am sure Mr President will authorise the process is return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue. That is a situation we are all looking forward.”
Tinubu had presented before the National Assembly an expenditure proposal of N27.5 trillion 2024 Appropriation Bill on Wednesday.
Edun explained that the government planned to expedite the procurement process to enhance capital spending in the upcoming budget.
The Minister said:
“When we look at actual budget performance, expenditure as at 3rd quaters of the year which is September, was 32 percent below the budget estimate, revenue was five percent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging, debt service, because of change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency and the fact we have foreign debt of about $46billion outstanding, means that debt service was up by 18 percent.
“Capital expenditure performed below budget quite significantly. We are looking at issue of procurement process and ways to speed up capital spending, in term of overall balance of the budget.
“Fiscal deficit is expected to come down from N13.7 trillion to N9.2 trillion and importantly, the deficit, the amount of the budget to be funded by borrowing is down from 6.1 percent to 3.9 percent that is percent of GDP and Capital expenditure remains at 32 percent, so that is the while structure of the budget.”
