Jonathan to present N4.4trn budget today

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan will today present the 2015 budget proposal of N4,357.96 trillion to the National Assembly.

President Jonathan in a letter to both the Senate and the House of Representatives which was read on the floor of the two chambers also showed a revision of the oil benchmark from the initial $73 per barrel to $65 per barrel.

President Jonathan informed the National Assembly that the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will lay the budget estimate on the floor of the Senate. This is the second time the Minister of Finance will be presenting the national budget to the National Assembly on behalf of President Jonathan. The first time the development was recorded in the history of Nigerian national budget presentation was last year when the President delegated his power to the Minister to represent him.

According to the revised budget estimates, N627.16 billion will be spent on capital expenditure which includes N380.70 billion for the Ministries, Departments and agencies; N144.42 billion will be capital expenditure in statutory transfers and N102.03 billion for the Subsidy Re-investment Empowerment Programme, SURE-P.

A total of N2,622.42 trillion was earmarked for the recurrent expenditure which also includes personnel costs for MDAs that stands at N1,801trillion, Overheads, N216,56 billion, pensions N228,81 billion and N376.05 billion budgeted for other service wide votes.

Service on domestic debt is expected to gulp N894.61 billion while that of foreign debt will take N48.39 billion.

Budget revised thrice

President Jonathan had earlier in October, presented to the National Assembly a budget proposal of N4.817 trillion with the oil benchmark put at $78 per barrel. It was later cut down to N4.7 trillion with the benchmark at $73 per barrel. The President has now for the third time revised the oil benchmark to $65 per barrel with the total budget size of N4.4 trillion against N4,724.69 trillion budgeted in 2014.