The Senate, on Wednesday, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to expedite work on the 2021 budget estimates to ensure its timely presentation to the National Assembly by the end of September.
Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, stated this in his remarks after referring the 2021 – 2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper request to the Senate Committees on Finance; and National Planning for further legislative work.
President Buhari’s letter seeking the Red Chamber’s approval for the fiscal document was read by Senate President during plenary on Tuesday.
The Senate President charged both committees to engage the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning on the MTEF/FSP request.
He also asked the committee to support revenue-generating agencies towards meeting expected revenue targets.
“We need to ensure that they have all the support that they require from the National Assembly, particularly the Senate, to meet their targets.
“Meanwhile, the executive should continue to work on the preparations for the 2021 budget, and by this we are also equally committed to ensuring that we receive the budget estimates at the end of September and that we are able to consider the budget and get it passed before the end of December to repeat what we did for budget 2020,” Lawan said.
The committees are expected to report back to the Senate in four weeks.
FG projects N12.65 trillion as budget for 2021
Meanwhile, the Federal Government of Nigeria has projected the sum of N12.65 trillion as budget for 2021, according to the MTEF/FSP document.
It also projected the sum of N5.16 trillion as budget deficit for 2021 up from N4.98trillion in the 2020 budget.
In the fiscal document, the federal government also pegged the 2021 oil benchmark at $40 per barrel and an exchange rate of N360 to one US dollar.
The statutory transfers stands at N481billion, Debt Servicing N3.124trillion, sinking fund N220billion, recurrent expenditure of N5.7trillion and capital expenditure of N3.33trillion.
The capital expenditure represents 26.3 per cent of total expenditure and it is 24 per cent higher than the 2020 provision of N2.69trillion.
The government also projected Stamp Duty to earn N500 billion up from N200billion in 2020.
A total of N4.31 trillion is provided for personnel and pension costs, an increase of N724.67billion over 2020.
The government projected an oil production of 1.88million barrels per day for 2021 up from 1.80mbpd in the 2020 budget.
