President Goodluck Jonathan has formally conveyed his decision to postpone the 2014 budget presentation to the National Assembly.
The budget presentation was earlier scheduled to hold today, 19th November 2013, take place today (Tuesday), but the president wrote a letter to the National Assembly, saying the lower and upper chambers need to first harmonise the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Financial Strategy Paper (FSP) before the presentation can hold. He also expressed hope that this will be done in the shortest possible time.
“In the circumstance, it has become necessary to defer the presentation of the 2014 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly until such a time when both respected chambers would have harmonised their positions on the MTEF” hoping that “it will be in the shortest possible time”.
Commenting on the letter, Minority Leader of the Federal House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila described the president’s reason as very cogent, considering that under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the budget is predicated upon the MTEF, which has not yet been passed”= even though the Senate passed a version of it with a benchmark at $76.50 while the House passed the $79 per barrel benchmark.
He praised Jonathan for his readiness to present the budget in person rather than delegating a government official as had been thought he would. The latter, gbajabiamila argued, would have been unacceptable to many legislators, based on tradition, law and the constitution.
“The Fiscal Responsibility Act envisages a situation where the MTEF is actually submitted to the National Assembly months ahead of the passage of the budget, not a week or two before the budget, so it will give us time to thoroughly and vigorously debate the issues that may be contained therein”, he said.
“Definitely, they will have to, at some point, if it comes to that, go back to the drawing board and re-arrange or re-draft their budget in conformity with what the benchmark is, because it throws it up quite a bit.
“Despite the setback, we cannot sacrifice a proper budget at the altar of being timeous. It is unfortunate but the National Assembly will speed up its harmonisation process. We can harmonise in a couple of days if we want to and agree or disagree”.
Although both the Executive and Legislature have both narrowed the postpone of the budget presentation to MTEF and FSP, Huhuonline.com believes there is certainly more to the matter than meets the eye, as earlier stated in its editorial of Monday 18th November 2013.
The president was originally billed to present the 2014 Appropriation Bill on 12th November 2013 but it was postponed, highlighting the frosty relationship between the executive and legislative arms of government at the federal level. No official reason was given for the decision but it is believed to be related to the ongoing power struggle in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and battle for supremacy in the politics of 2015.
Initial disagreements by lawmakers in both chambers over the poor implementation of the 2013 Budget were compounded by fundamental issues about the 2014 to 2016 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as well as wrangling among ministries and departments over spending cuts.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala gave the president a budget envisaging 10 per cent cut in public spending but government wants to cut federal spending from 5 trillion naira (US$31billion) to N4.4 trillion next year and shift spending from recurrent expenditure such as salaries to capital and infrastructural investment.
