Senate passes harmonized budget of N3.102 trillion
Written by Emmanuel Aziken
Wednesday, 18 February 2009

A consensus between the Senate and the House of Representatives authorizing the Federal Government to spend N3.102 trillion in the 2009 financial year was approved by the Senate today, Wednesday, Feb. 18. The N3.102 trillion spending limit approved by the Senate was upon the consensus arrived by the Joint Finance Committee of the National Assembly which harmonized differences between the two versions of the budget separately passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The report of the Joint Finance Committee was laid before the Senate by Senator Iyiola Omisore, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation and chairman of the Joint Finance Committee. According to the rules of the Senate the report was endorsed without debate.

The N3.102 trillion figure agreed by the Committee is remarkably higher than the figures earlier passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The figure is also higher than the N2.955 trillion expenditure proposal presented by President Umaru Yar`Adua last December.

The higher expenditure limit arrived at by the Joint Finance Committee was upon a raise in the statutory transfers to the Universal Basic Education programme and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to correspond with the adjustment to federal spending.

The joint finance Committee in its report presented to the Senate and endorsed without debate deposed that “the statutory transfers were reviewed upwards in line with the increased spending since the allocations to Universal Basic Education and the Niger Delta Development Commission are based on percentage of total spending.’’

In the budget plan passed by the Senate based on the report of the Joint Finance Committee, N1,627,287,216,097 was proposed for recurrent expenditure, N1,022,255,794,620 earmarked for capital expenditure, N168,620,847,114 was approved for statutory transfers while N283,649,892,795 was approved for the servicing of the Federal Government budget in the current fiscal year.

The total estimate of N3.102 is higher than the N3.048 trillion passed by the Senate in December and the N3.087 trillion passed by the House of Representatives last January.

The NDDC is to receive N29.5 billion as statutory transfer for the year and another N21.8 billion as outstanding arrears from its share of the 2008 excess crude account.

The National Judicial Council is to receive N78 billion and the Universal Basic Education scheme is to get N39.3 billion in the year.

Under the capital expenditure provisions approved by the Senate Works is to get the lion share of capital spending with a provision of N208 billion the highest ever allocation to the Ministry. The second highest allocation is Agriculture and Water resources with an allocation of N138.9 billion followed by the Ministry of Power which is receiving N94.6 billion.

Education which is receiving a capital provision of N40 billion, however, got the highest allocation for recurrent spending with an allocation of N184.6 billion followed by the Police N183.6 billion and the Ministry of Defence with a provision of N176.2 billion.

The National Assembly got an allocation of N101.3 billion for recurrent expenditure.

The newly established Ministry of Niger Delta got a recurrent allocation of N3 billion and a capital provision of N48 billion

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