The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has blamed the National Assembly for the delay in the presentation of next year’s budget by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The council had last Friday during a special session presided over by Buhari approved the budget proposal for next year’s fiscal calendar.
The Minister of Budget and Planning, Udoma Udoma, who briefed State House reporters alongside his Information counterpart, Lai Mohammed, and that of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, said the budget has been ready.
He said the Council was waiting for the National Assembly to give a date for the presentation.
“As you already know, the budget is ready. We are liaising with the National Assembly because they are to give us a date. If they say today, we will go. The budget is ready,” he said.
Daily Trust reports that the FEC had on 24th October, 2018 approved the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) for the 2019 -2021 to provide template for the 2019 budget.
In the MTF/FSP, N8.73trillion was estimated for the 2019 budget which is N400billion lower than that of this year.
Also, the price of crude oil per barrel was pegged at $60, exchange rate at $305 and daily crude oil production was put at 2.3million by the FEC.
The MTEF/FSP was designed to translate strategic development objective of the economic recovery and growth plan into a realistic and implementable budget framework.
