- The finance minister, Hajia Zainab Ahmed, has said the 2019 budget will be partly funded with recovered loots
- The minister explained that the funding for the budget will come from oil and non-oil revenues
- Ahmed added that the federal government will also have to borrow to fund the budget
The federal government has said that the 2019 budget will greatly benefit from recovered loots and revenues from the sale of public assets.
The finance minister, Hajia Zainab Ahmed, made this known recently at a session with journalists in Lagos, as she added that domestic borrowing will also contribute to funding the budget, Leadership reports.
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Ahmed said revenues that would be sources of funding will be from both oil and non-oil sources. She mentioned this when talking on the available options for funding for the budget.
She said: “The 2019 budget has defined all of its funding options and if you look at it, the funding options are government revenue – oil and non-oil and independent revenues.
“Then recoveries from looted funds as well as the sale of government assets and borrowing – foreign and domestic. It is detailed out and each with a specific target defined in the budget.”
The minister also said that N4.04 trillion would be used for salaries and for other expenditures of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
Her words: “The 2019 budget has size of N8.83trillion. There is oil revenue of N3.73trillion, non-oil revenue of N1.3 trillion and other revenues – N1.2trillion.
“But, on the expenditure side, we have debt service which is N2.1 trillion. We have recurrent expenditure – salaries and other routine operational expenditure of MDAs at N4.04trillion, capital expenditure stands at N2trillion and statutory transfers at N492billion.”
Ahmed also said Nigeria would borrow irrespective of the huge Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) that is available, she gave the reason for such as deficit in expenditure.
She said: “What we have as a deficit is a total expenditure less to our projected revenue in the budget. The difference that the revenue cannot finance is the deficit and that can only be financed either by selling some assets, recoveries such as what anti-graft agencies are doing or by borrowing locally or internationally.
“The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Federal Internal Revenue Service (FIRS) total revenue in 2018 was N6.8 trillion whereas the total expenditure is N9.1 trillion. The deficit is the difference between the expenditure that you plan to incur and the revenue you plan to generate and the financing of the deficit can be met through borrowing or any of the options stated.
“That is why we have to borrow because we have a definite amount which cannot be covered by recoveries of looted fund or covered by sale of assets and so on. The difference we will borrow. The same thing that happened in 2018 will happen in 2019 and that is how we structure any budget.”
The minister said the executive does not determine when budgets are passed as it is totally in the hands of the National Assembly.
She said: “...the requirements by law is that the executive should submit the budget by September to the National Assembly so that by December the budget will be passed and by January we start implementing it, but in the first year, we submitted the budget in December because the ministers were sworn in in November; the second year was October and third year in November, but in all of these periods, the average number of months for the budget to be completed and passed increased.
“When the 2018 budget was passed to the National Assembly we had an understanding because they also were concerned about the lateness in the passage of the bill and we were hopeful that the budget would be passed in December or January
She however hoped the budget will be passed in time so the budget cycle can be balanced.
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Legit.ng previously reported that President Muhammadu Buhari addressed members of the joint National Assembly during the presentation of the 2019 budget on Wednesday, December 19, 2018.
The president during the 2019 budget presentation urged the National Assembly to ensure a speedy passage of the bill. However, in the new budget presented by the president, the allocation to the National Assembly was slashed by N14.5 billion.
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