President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday sought the approval of the Senate to borrow $7.9bn (about N1.24trn) for some pipeline projects. In a letter to the President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, and read on the floor of the chamber President Jonathan said that the pipeline projects were already in final stages. President Jonathan explained that the borrowing would cover the period of the medium term framework of the present administration. He said that the amount was broken into US$2.64bn a year to cover the period.

The President added that the cumulative facilities were offered to Nigeria by the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, Exim Bank of China and India Line Credits. Even though details of the pipeline projects were not disclosed by Mark when he read the letter yesterday, there were indications that the projects included power and general infrastructure development.

The President told the lawmakers that special initiatives were designed to put the economy back on track through growth and employment activities geared towards the implementation of the transformation agenda. He said that projects had been designed to create employment opportunities to grow the economy.

The President asked the Senate to note that the objectives of the projects conformed to the transformation of his administration and cut across various sectors of the economy. The President also asked the Senate to approve the list of pipeline projects for inclusion in the medium term (2012- 2014) external borrowing plans of the Federal Government.

Meanwhile, the Senate said it had uncovered N1trn projects, which were secretly smuggled into the 2012 budget by some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Chairman of the Appropriation Committee, Senator Ahmed Maccido, said this discovery was made during the recently concluded budget defence conducted by the various committees of the National Assembly.

He said that over 40 per cent of the projects presented to the various committees by the MDAs were not originally captured in the N4.79trn budget proposal presented to the National Assembly on December 13 , 2011 by President Jonathan. Maccido stated that if not for the eagle eyes of the lawmakers, the 2012 budget would have shut up to N5.7trn as a result of the discoveries. Maccido added that although the Senate had taken a position to ensure that the 2012 budget was passed before the end of this month, the appropriation committee would subject the budget to a thorough scrutiny to expunge all the unauthorised inclusions.

The appropriation committee chairman in a statement yesterday said:  The problem is that we are seeing projects that are not in the originally version of the budget presented to us by President Goodluck Jonathan and the substantial part of these projects are being smuggled into the budget by the MDGS and ministers.  Over 40 per cent of the projects in the budget are not in the original budget.

And we are saying no to that.  The items so smuggled into the budget are over N1trn. So, we are right now comparing the budget as originally presented by the president and the version presented by the MDGS.  Unless these projects are there in the original budget, we are going to scrap them.

It's no longer going to be business as usual.  These people are just smuggling in projects that are not in the budgets, and we going to remove them, he said.

SOURCE: http://nationalmirroronline.net/news/31273.html

What happened to the SUBSIDY FUND ? If after removing the petroleum subsidy and still borrowing money, that means something is wrong somewhere.Jona is leading us to a collapse like the way Abacha did,this would affect Nigerians as a whole and the next president would use his tenor to pay debt,like Obasanjo did when resumed office after Abacha #MYOPINION , what do you guys think ?

we wuld hav to borrow moni to feed d president in d nearest future

Dem swear for this GEJ from belle.

Am I missing something? Please the ecomists in the house should help me out, I thought they said we were borrowing too much and if it continues we won't be able to pay back in future, thats why the subsidy had to go? I also thought they said the subsidy finds will be used to solve all our problem. Why is GEJ still borrowing naw?

@kokoA
So you believed what they told you? yahoo o oi, yahoo o oi,
you've just been fooled.
Will those who voted jonathan and not PDP please stand up!

Yahoo o o, yahooze!
will those who voted Gej and not pdp please stand up?