The Senate on Wednesday passed the 2016 Appropriation Bill of N6.06 trillion, reducing it by N17 billion from N6.07 trillion proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The passage of the bill followed the consideration of the report of the Committee on Appropriation presented at plenary on Tuesday.
Before approving the budget through a vote, the senators expressed displeasure at the lapses of inadequate provision for personnel cost.
Reacting to it, Chairman of Appropriation Committee, Sen. Danjuma Goje, said that the lapses would be taken care of from the “Service Wide Vote’’ by a Supplementary Budget if the need arose.
He explained that if the committee had attempted to clear all the lapses, the budget would not have been ready for passage, adding that Nigerians would assume the legislature had delayed the budget.
“We still have pockets, few that we believe will have some problems and the budget office confirmed to us that they may come with something to make it up.
“Because this budget is full of controversy, we didn’t want to add more controversy; if we add more controversy, the report wouldn’t have been submitted now.
“The National Assembly will be blamed for delaying this budget, and that is why we did everything possible to ensure that we beat the deadline instead of continuing back and forth.
“Nigerians will not understand, they will say the National Assembly is playing politics with this budget meanwhile we are doing everything possible to ensure that the budget is as implementable as possible,” Goje said.
In the budget as passed, recurrent expenditure stands at N2.65 trillion while capital expenditure got N1.59 trillion.
The expenditure profile comprised statutory transfers, N351.37 billion and debt service, N1.48 trillion.
The Budget is predicated on oil benchmark of 38 dollars per barrel, daily crude oil production of 2.2 million barrels and an exchange rate of N197 to a dollar.
Goje observed that the budget was presented late and did not give ample time for consideration and therefore, recommended that subsequent budgets should be presented in time.
Meanwhile, the Senate has proceeded on a two-week recess to resume on April 12. (NAN)
