The Nigerian Senate on Tuesday passed a figure of N4.493 trillion as budget for the 2015 fiscal year without any consideration for subsidy of petroleum products.
The difference between the passed budget and that submitted to the National Assembly by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, four months ago, is that the budget, as passed by the Senate, is N51 billion higher.
Okonjo-Iweala had submitted a budget of N4.425 trillion to both chambers of the National Assembly in December 2014.
The passed budget has a provision of N21 billion for the funding of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P)
It also contains N2.607, 132,491,708 as recurrent expenditure and N556,995,465,449 as capital expenditure.
The budget will be driven by $53 oil benchmark, an exchange rate of N190.00 to one dollar; 2.2782m per barrel crude oil production per day; and deficit gross domestic product of -1.12 per cent.
The approved budget, according to the Chairman, Joint Senate Committee on Appropriation and Finance, Mohammed Maccido, is not different from what was passed by the House of Representatives, adding that there was no provision for subsidy in the original proposal submitted by Okonjo-Iweala to the National Assembly.
He however opined that there should be provision for it especially since there was already a disagreement between the oil marketers and the Federal Government over subsidy payment.
His colleague and Chairman, Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator Ahmad Lawan, on his part, expressed belief that the government of General Muhammadu Buhari would review the budget when it begins on 29th May.
According to him, the constitutional provision is that the National Assembly should have even passed the budget before now but it was delayed due to the exigencies of this period.
