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Tag: 2019 Appropriation Bill

  • Senate reconvenes April 24 to pass 2019 budget

    The much awaited report of the 2019 Appropriation bill was laid in the Senate and House of Representatives Wednesday.

    The Appropriation Committees of the two chambers submitted a harmonized budget report for the consideration and adoption.

    In the Senate Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Mohammed Danjuma Goje submitted the report while the Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Mustapha Dawaki did the same.

    Both chambers did not consider the report of the N8.83 trillion budget, proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari for the 2019 fiscal year.

    Read Also: Senate passes seven bills rejected by Buhari

    Findings showed that the lawmakers who have proceeded on the Easter break would reconvene on April Wednesday 24, 2019 to pass the budget.

    The House also adjourned plenary to enable members observe the Easter celebration, would reconvene on Tuesday April 23, 2019 to pass the budget.

    It is not clear whether there were major changes and additions made in the money bill as proposed by President Buhari.

    Senate President, Bukola Saraki, had mandated sub-committees to adopt the Executive submission of the budget in place of any ministry, department or agency that failed to turn up to defend their budgets.

     

  • Senate may pass 2019 budget in April

    The Senate Tuesday resumed the consideration of the general principles of the 2019 Appropriation Bill with more knocks on the budget.

    The upper chamber slated the passage of the N8.83 trillion budget estimates for next month.

    Senate President, Bukola Saraki, after the conclusion of the debate of the general principles of the fiscal document, gave the Appropriation Committee where the budget proposal was referred to, two weeks to turn in its report for consideration and passage.

    The upper chamber resolved to ignore heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, who may fail to appear before the sub-committees to defend their budget proposals.

    Sub-committees were mandated to adopt the proposals as submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari to a joint session of the National Assembly at the event that any MDA failed to appear before them.

    The lawmakers resolved, like it was the case in the past, not to run after heads of MDAs who may refuse to appear before the sub-committees to defend their budget proposals and estimates.

    Saraki gave the Appropriation Committee the deadline of April 2, 2019 to submit its report for the consideration of the Senate.

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    He said, “The relevant committees should swing into action and ensure that they conclude work on this budget within two weeks. The Committee on Appropriations should submit its report on the 2nd of April so that we can pass the budget.

    “Let me also add that the various committees should not run or force any head of agency to appear. If they don’t appear before the given time, adopt what was submitted by the President and submit your report. That is what you should do.”

    In his contribution to the debate of the general principles of the budget, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, (Abia South) said that the 2019 budget christened “budget consolidation” is actually “a budget of consolidation of poverty.”

    Abaribe who noted that the budget projections did not support the entire template of the budget estimates insisted that fiscal document cannot be implemented.

    The Federal Government, he said, should as a matter of urgent, prepare and send entire new budget by September, for the National Assembly work on.

    Abaribe said: “People who draft budgets for the President give it different names. They write it with their hands in cheek. It means we are paying more debt than spending on projects. When they say budget of consolidation, they are consolidating poverty. This budget will not be implementable.

    “You can see that where we are is just consolidation of poverty. Let them leave this budget. Time is far spent. Let them bring a new budget by September. This budget is a waste of time. I don’t know the essence of this budget they have brought here. Let’s move on to something more important.”

    Senator Suleiman Adokwe, on his own noted that poor allocation and releases to fund capital projects is a major challenge the Executive must tackle for economic growth.

    Adokwe said, “My major problem with the budget is that not much has been voted for capital projects. Year in, year out, we have the same poor allocation to capital projects. Agencies continue to waste money on recurrent expenditure. Even the release of funds for capital projects, has fallen below our expectations.

    “There should be 100 percent release of funds for capital projects. There should also be monitoring of capital projects to ensure that monies released are not misappropriated.”

    Senator Ben Murray Bruce canvassed the scrapping of moribund agencies.

    The Bayelsa State Senator noted that some of the agencies were established in the 1960s and had outlived their relevance.

    He said: “This budget is not different from the one they presented three years ago. There are agencies that were set up in the 1960s. They should be scrapped. We have two percent of Nigerians who are civil servants consuming about 45 percent of our annual budget. We spend trillions on fuel subsidy, but isn’t in our budget. I don’t know what kind of voodoo accounting is this.

    “We need to remove the fuel subsidy. We need to take it out. It is a terrible thing. I am not sure the Labour or Nigerians will complain. They will support the move and ensure that we spend the money on other sectors. This is the right thing to do.

    “President Muhammadu Buhari, when picking his ministers should select smart people and not those current ones who can’t think outside the box. There are brilliant people here who can do better. I don’t know why we select people who are not smart.”

    Senator Matthew Urhoghide, asked the Federal Government to take steps to explore more alternative sources of income to fund its annual budgets.

    He said: “Budgeting has become an annual ritual. We have not been able to put a balanced budget on the table. A serious country must ensure that it has a serious source of income to grow its economy. Even MDAs that are supposed to generate revenues don’t do that anymore.

    “When we keep talking about budgets every year, it becomes an exercise in futility. We need to sit down and talk about how to ensure that the lives of our people are better. Once this budget is referred to the committees, I know that heads of MDAs will not appear as at when due and in the end, they will blame us.“

  • House suspends plenary to April 2

    The House of Representatives has suspended plenary to April 2 to enable members engage Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) at committee level on the defense of 2019 budget proposal.

    This was sequel to a unanimous adoption of a motion by the Majority Leader of the House, Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila (APC-Lagos) at the plenary on Tuesday.

    In his ruling, the Deputy Speaker of House, Rep. Yussuf Lassun (APC-Osun), urged all the standing committees to work and conclude budget defense before May.

    He said that the 2019 Appropriation Bill should be ready for passage upon resumption of the House in May.

    NAN

  • 2019 Budget: Reps to meet Ministers over errors in figures

    The House of Representatives would meet with the Finance, Budget and National Ministers as well as the Director General (DG) of the National Budget Office over fundamental errors in figures in the 2019 Appropriation Bill.

    This is as Speaker Yakubu Dogara resisted attempt to shelve the debate once again after Rita Orji (PDP, Lagos) raised a point of order that the number of lawmakers on the floor did not meet the required number for a quorum for plenary.

    The Speaker said since she has no knowledge of the number of lawmakers on the register, it will be impossible for her to know if the floor meets the quorum requirement, adding that the physical presence of members on the floor is not the deciding factor.

    The debate of the bill was twice put off due to the same reason of errors in figures and need for members to have enough time to go through it for informed constitutions to the debate.

    However, when the debate commenced, Chika Adamu (APC, Niger) noted that proposed allocations to the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Budget and National Planning, Budget Office and the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation under main statutory components did not correspond with the total summary in the document.

    As a result, he requested if contributions to the debate could continue or be restricted to the general principles of the bill.

    In his contribution, Ahman Pategi (PDP, Kwara) explained that the difference in figures could be down to typographical error because all allocations figures were correct except in the summary section.

    He suggested that the leadership of appropriate Committee of the House should meet with the leadership of the affected agencies to sort it out.

    He also noted that the figures could be corrected when the bill gets to the Committee stage where thorough scrutiny of the document would be done.

    Speaker Yakubu Dogara went into discussion with the Deputy Speaker Yussuff Lasun and others after which he announced that the debate would continue.

    He said the irreconcilable figures in the document meant contributions would be restricted to the general principles while the leader of the Appropriation and Finance Committee would meet the Finance and Budget and Planning Ministries and the Budget Office.

    He said the outcome of the meeting, with the correct figures, would be provided before the conclusion of debate on the 2019 Appropriation Bill on Thursday.

    Earlier, in his contribution, Deputy Speaker Lasun said it has become extremely important for Nigerians to realize the economic status of the country in comparison to other economies.

    He said the size of the 2019 budget in actual sense, compared to the population does not portray the country as rich with the N8.83 trillion budget being just about $10b.

    According to him, when spread around the population, what is spent by the government on an individual is disheartening and as such it has become necessary for the government and the populace to explore other sustainable alternatives to fund the economy.

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    The Deputy Speaker also noted that the dwindling contribution of oil revenue to the 2019 budget going down to about 67 percent, the government and the populace must be forced to explore other means of funding and sustaining the economy.

    Lasun, who appealed for a speedy passage of the Bill also drew attention to poor implementation of budgets, which he said should be critically looked into, as well as a need to decide the type of budgeting system the country should adopt.

    He said policy somersault once one is adopted should be avoided, “Because we have seen how the various models we adopted in the past have not really worked.

    “It time for us to think out of the box. Maybe if we had stuck to one, appreciable economic progress would have been recorded over the years. We also have to look at whether the size of our budget can sustain a meaningful development.

    “I will, however, appeal to the Executive to try as much as possible to implement this budget,” he added.

  • Gaidam signs 2019 appropriation bill into law

    Yobe State Governor Ibrahim Gaidam on Tuesday signed the 2019 appropriation bill into law.

    The Governor at the same time performed the lunching of the 2019 Armed Forces Emblem and Appeal week at WAWA Hall of Government House Damaturu.

    Tagged, ‘Budget of Consolidation’, Gov. Gaidam said the House has retained the initial budget size of N91.65 billion but increased the opening balance by over N3 billion due to additional cash flow from the Federation Account in the following month before the budget was presented.

    “The net allocation to finance the capital programmes is now N41, 376,630,000 or 45.2%, while the sum of N50,268,967,000 or 54.8% is earmarked to cover recurrent services.

    “Our overall budget performance for both recurrent and capital expenditure from January, 2018 to 23rd November, 2018 was N56,367,130,078.88 representing 61.1% success”, Gaidam said.

    Gov. Gaidam explained that the overall budget performance for both recurrent and capital expenditure in last year’s budget stood at N68,549,130,255.42, representing 74.4% success. He added that the implementation of the 2019 budget will commence with an opening balance of N13,117,944,830.00.

    Read Also: Ortom urges traditional rulers to assist on security

    In his earlier remarks, Speaker Yobe State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Zanna Ali
    Machina, hyped on the cordial relationship between the House and Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam’s administration, adding that, the overall goal of the House was to “promote good governance and create a positive impact for the teaming people of Yobe State”.

    Over N50 million was also realized at the launching of the Armed Forces Emblem and Appeal week with the highest donation of N25 million from the Yobe State Government and a personal donation of N1 million from Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam.

  • Passage of 2019 budget may be delayed as NASS adjourns

    The proposed N8.83 trillion 2019 Appropriation Bill may not be passed by the National Assembly until after the 2019 general elections.

    This indication emerged on Thursday as the two chambers of the National Assembly adjourned plenary till January 16, 2019.

    The budget estimate was presented to a joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday by President Muhammadu Buhari. 

    Senators and House of Representatives members adjourned plenary without the second reading of the money bill.

    The presentation of the fiscal estimate by Buhari served as the first reading of the Appropriation Bill.

    The second reading is debate of the general principles of the budget, which gives the lawmakers the opportunity to talk about the merits and demerits of the budget.

    What follows debate of the general principles of the budget is referring the Bill to the Appropriation Committee of the two chambers.

    The standing committees of the two chambers will serve as sub committees of the Appropriation Committee to consider the Bill.

    The standing committees are empowered to invite ministers and other heads of government agencies to defend their budget proposals.

    This has always been source of conflict between heads of MDAs and the lawmakers.

    Although the two chambers of the National Assembly adjourned on Thursday to reconvene on January 16, insiders said the lawmakers would “merely resume plenary and adjourn again to allow everybody to prepare for 2019 the election in February 2019.”

    A source close to the leadership of the National Assembly told our reporter that “anybody who is expecting the National Assembly to pass the 2019 budget before the election is not being fair to us.

    “Where will you get the ministers and the heads of government agencies to defend their proposals?”

    He added: “It is clear that it is practically impossible for the National Assembly to pass the budget before the 2019 election.

    “When was the budget presented by President Buhari? Who is talking about passage at this time when the second reading of the money bill has not been read.

    “We will follow the normal process and see how far we can go when we reconvene in January.

    “Passage of the budget is completely out of the question now. Nobody is thinking about that.”