The National Assembly has passed the 2017 Appropriations Bill with a total estimate of N7.441 trillion.
President Muhammadu Buhari presented a proposal of N7.28 trillion to a joint session of the national assembly on December 14, but the assembly jerked up the budget report by N143 billion.
The Appropriations Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives separately presented their harmonised reports of the budget for consideration and subsequent passage on Thursday, May 11, 2017.
According to the report, N434.4 billion was appropriated 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).
Speaking in the plenary, 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.”
In the breakdown of the National Assembly budget released by Mr. Abdullahi, the Management, Senate the House of Representatives are to receive N14,919,065013, 31,398,765,886 and 49,052,743,983.
Other appropriations under the National Assembly are as follows: 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 that are not under statutory transfers club.
Capital expenditure is slightly less, taking 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.
The Clause 11 of the bill, referenced in the harmonized report, provides that the budget will run for a course of 12 months starting from the date is assented into law, in line with Section of the Constitution.
*With reports from PremiumTimes
