Senate passes N895bn supplementary budget for second reading

The Senate on Wednesday passed the 2021 Supplementary Appropriation Bill of N895, 842, 465, 917 for second reading.

This was after the lawmakers debated the general principle of the supplementary budget, a day after Senate President Ahmad Lawan read President Muhammadu Buhari’s letter seeking the Red Chamber’s approval of the budget.

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The supplementary budget contained funds to purchase military equipment and COVID-19 vaccine programme.

Lawan, after the budget passed second reading, referred it to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, to report back on Tuesday.

The details of the supplementary budget showed that the Executive proposed to fund N45.63 billion of the N83. 56 billion required for the COVID-19 vaccine programme.

The balance of N37. 93 billion required for COVID-19 vaccines, salaries and other health-related expenditures totalling N41.6 billion and N48.2 billion recurrent component of defence and security will be funded by borrowing N135 billion from some special reserve levy accounts.

The Executive also proposed to fund the balance of N722.4 billion for capital expenditure on defense and security and capital supplementation from new borrowings in the absence of any supplementary revenue sources.