*Today on #BillTracker: National Assembly Budget and Research Office Act SB. 222 #NABROBill. By Senator Jide Omoworare (Osun East ).*

*TRACK RECORD*
First Reading : Tuesday 16th February, 2016
Second Reading: Wednesday 27th April, 2016.
Present Status: Committee on Establishment for further Legislative Input.

*The National Assembly Budget and Research Office Bill seeks to achieve the following:*

*The #NABROBill seeks to give power to any office to independently provide assistance to @nassnigeria on budgetary matters and ensure the requisite expertise, independence & transparency is given to such technical matters as budgets.

* #NABROBill will allow a proper review and analysis of budgetary proposals from the executive arm and help save costs and loopholes that seem deliberately created in the annual budgets as drain pipes.

*The #NABROBill SB. 222 will ensure legislation is made and decisions taken based on consideration of financial and economic impacts and provide an independent review of Federal Government budgets including monitoring of existing and proposed projects.

*The #NABROBill SB. 222 will also allow the indelible inputs of trained, specialized and seasoned bureaucrats and technocrats and enable the benefit of permanent and perpetual facts, figures, data and statistics to help the smooth passage of appropriation bills.

* #NABROBill SB 222 will ensure continuous, regular, periodic, timely & objective analysis and tracking of budgets at every point in time and effective oversight.

*The #NABROBill will provide Committees of the National Assembly Nigeria with an additional source of obtaining "essential budgetary information" needed when processing national budgets rather than statistics derived solely from the Executive.

*OTHER DETAILS OF THE #NABROBILL*

-The #NABROBill SB. 222 has 20 Clauses and 6 Schedules which will provide legal backing for the already existing office to provide unbiased & non - partisan analysis of budget estimates.

- #NABROBill SB. 222 will comprise of very sound structure with competent experts on budgets just as the Budget Office.

-The closest and only office that assists National Assembly budget - related matters is the National Institute for Legislative Studies but it does so in a generic nature in researching and analyzing legislation and policy issues; not specific to budgetary and economic matters.

-The United States which operates a Federal System of Government like ours has the United States Congressional Budget Office which #NABRO is designed to function like. Uganda a developing nation has the Legislative Budget Office, LBO which generally provides the Ugandan Parliament.

-Passage of the #NABROBill will offer a stable template to determine the allocative and operational efficiency of budget implementation. Abandonment of Government projects and repetitions will be halted as the #NABROBill will ensure a collation of unimplemented projects in the preceding year.

-#NABRO in its scrutiny of the #2016Budget detected about N200 Billion in abnormalities of repetitions, unidentified items and errors.

-It is noteworthy that the same #NABROBill was passed in the 6th and 7th Assemblies but unfortunately was not assented to.

-#NABRO has already been existing since 2012 with full structures and the #NABROBill passage will not add any financial burden.