Senate set to resume sitting today

The Senate will reconvene today after seven weeks of holiday amid expectations that President Goodluck will forward to the legislators the Medium Term Expenditure Framework for the 2014 budget.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Ita Enang, in Abuja said that the National Assembly was still awaiting the framework from the executive.

He explained that there would be no budget presentation until MTEF was received and accordingly deliberated upon.

After receiving the MTEF, he said, the lawmakers would deliberate on the content with the intention to draw conclusion on which of the components of the framework would serve as benchmark for the budget.

After fruitful deliberation, the added, the framework would be passed and sent back to the executive, thus clearing the coast for budget presentation.

He said, 'In fact, MTEF after being deliberated upon by the National Assembly and forwarded back to the Presidency, usually serves as a basis upon which the budget profile of a particular year is predicated by the executive.'

The MTEF, which is expected to cover the period of 2014 - 2016 fiscal years, usually helps the nation in its revenue generation efforts.

The essential features of MTEF are production quota, oil benchmark and revenue projection.

There were, however fears in some quarters that since the MTEF was yet to arrive at National Assembly,  it could dash the hopes of a repeat of last year's feat when budget was presented on October 9.