2019 Budget: Buhari To Present N8.73 Trillion Budget to NationalAssembly in November

By The Nigerian Voice

President Muhammadu Buhari is expected next month, November, 2018 to present an Appropriation Bill of N8.73 trillion to the National Assembly for 2019 fiscal, The Nigerian Voice gathered.

Presidency sources disclosed that the president has planned to communicate to the National Assembly to request for a specific date he will present the budget proposal to the joint session of the the National Assembly.

It will however be recalled that the 2018 budget was presented on November 7, 2017 to the joint session of the National Assembly,

Anonymous source stated: “It is the National Assembly that will give the President a date. The president will soon request that a date be given to him to present the budget. That has been the practice. All I know is that the minister said next month.”

Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting which was presided over by President Buhari has also approved a Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF)/Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) for 2019-2021.

Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, revealed that the budget estimates of N8.73 trillion was proposed for 2019 fiscal year,N400 billion which is lower than that of 2018.

Udoma added that FEC has also pegged the price of crude oil per barrel at $60, exchange rate at $305 and daily crude oil production at 2.3 million.

“Today FEC approved 2019-2021 MTEF and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP). It was approved and it would be submitted to the National Assembly for their consideration,” Udoma said

The minister added also that the MTEF/FSP that was approved was designed to translate strategic development objective of the economic recovery and growth plan into a realistic and implementable budget framework.

“The key highlights are the following assumptions which are being proposed for the 2019 budget. Oil price benchmark of $60, oil production of 2.3m barrel per day, exchange rate of $305, GDP growth rate of 3.01 percent. In addition, the MTEF project a budget size for 2019 of N8.73tr which is about N400bn less than the N9.12tr for 2018,” Udoma said.

Fielding questions from journalists on why the budget was N400 billion lower than that of the 2018, he said, “The budget that we actually submitted to the National Assembly was N8.6 trillion for 2018, it is smaller than the final budget but it is actually bigger than the figure that we submitted. The idea is to ensure that we submit a finance-able budget.

“We resolved that we borrowed a lot to get out of the recession and reflect the economy and as revenue picks up, we will reduce the borrowing.

"The level of borrowing for next year’s budget will be slightly less than that of 2018,” he said, adding that “the full details will be submitted to the National Assembly and after they read it, it will be on our ministry’s website", Udoma said.