Reps pass N8.916 trillion budget for 2019

The House of Representatives has passed a Bill for an Act to authorize the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation, the sum of‎ N8,916,964,099,373 appropriation for the 2019 fiscal year, ending 31 December, 2019.

A breakdown of the‎ 2019 budget indicates that N502,058,892,965 is for Statutory Transfers; N2,254,014,113,092 is for Debt Servicing; N4,055,940,383,684 is for Recurrent Expenditure; and N2,094,950,709,632 is for Capital Expenditure.

This also included the sum of N10 billion Special Intervention Fund meant for re- building Zamfara State, in the aftermath of bandits attacks.

Speaker Yakubu Dogara, who reeled out the figures before the lawmakers during Tuesday’s plenary, pledged that the “bill be enacted as an Act of the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

The figures were unanimously approved by the lawmakers, and subsequently passed by the House of Representatives, to be cited as an Act of National Assembly, 2019.

One of the highlights of the 2019 budget passage was the downward review of the National Assembly budge to N128 billion, as against N130 billion in 2018, which shows a reduction of N2 billion.

Daily Trust recalls that the Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Mustapha Dawaki (APC, Kano), had on 17 April, 2019, laid before the House, a report on the 2019 Appropriation Bill, which was considered by the House Committee on Supply.

The budget passage is coming less than five months after President Muhammadu Buhari first presented the N8.83bn to the National Assembly in late December, 2018.

This was, perhaps, an improvement over the 2018 budget, which was passed by the legislators in June, 2018.

To become a law, the 2019 Appropriation Bill must receive the assent of President Muhammadu Buhari.