NASS OKAYS N7.44 TRILLION BUDGET FOR 2017

Admin l Thursday, May 11, 2017

ABUJA, Nigeria -The National Assembly today approved a total budget of N7.44 trillion for the year 2017, about N16 billion above the N7.28 billion submitted for the year by President Muhammadu Buhari in December 2016.

A breakdown of the budget shows that N434.4 billion was for statutory transfers to the National Judicial Council (N100 billion); Niger Delta Development Commission (N64.02 billion); Universal Basic Education (N95.2 billion); National Assembly (N125 billion); Public Complaints Commission (N4 billion); INEC (N45 billion); and National Human Rights Commission (N1.2 billion).

In the budget, the Senate and the House of Representatives are to receive N14,919,065013, 31,398,765,886 and 49,052,743,983.

Legislative aides, 9,602,095,928; NASS Service Commission, 2,415,712,873; PAC-Senate, N118,970,215; N142,764,258; General Services, N12,584,672,079; NASS Legislative Institute, 4,373,813,596; and Service Wide Vote, 391,396,169.

The National Assembly also appropriated N2,987,550,033,436 for non-debt recurrent expenditure of the MDAs.Capital expenditure is N2,177,866,775867.

For debt service, the National Assembly earmarked N1,488,002,436,547 to service domestic debts; N175,882,993,952 for foreign debts; and 177,460,296707 for sinking fund to retire maturing loans, totalling 1,841,345,727,206 for debt service.

Speaking during the plenary, Senator Dino Melaye said for the first, the budget contains full details of the National Assembly, not only line by line, but explicitly.

“I was happy when I saw NASS budget details in the document distributed to us this morning. This will afford civil society groups and every Nigerian to ask questions,” he said.

In his remarks, President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki said it is now clear that the process of passing the budget takes a rigorous process of five clear months.

He said the 2018 budget should come in by September 2017 so that it can be ready by January 2018. He thanked the appropriation committee for doing a thorough job on the budget.