Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun has said that the federal government might consider returning to the National Assembly to seek the lawmakers’ approval for a supplementary budget next year if projected revenue are surpassed.
Recall that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu presented a N27.5 trillion appropriation bill for 2024.
The bill is currently being checked by the legislative arm of government.
Addressing a joint sitting of the National Assembly Committee on Finance, Edun, told the lawmakers that there had been a tremendous improvement in the country’s revenue profile in recent months.
He said if the revenue continued to increase, the federal government might return to the National Assembly to seek further appropriation for the additional revenue.
He said, “The revenue performance was encouraging, here we see that the revenue profile is encouraging.
“It is expected that it will continue to be encouraging. There is a fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work.
“It is meant to provide fundamental changes together with digitalization and greater efficiency in collection because it is revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.
“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will be coming back, and I am sure Mr. President will authorize the process to return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue. That is a situation we are all looking forward to.”
Further more, he added that “When we look at the actual budget performance, expenditure as of the third quarter of the year, which is September, was 32 per cent below the budget estimate.
“Revenue was five per cent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging because of a change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency and the fact we have foreign debt of about $46 billion outstanding.
“This means that debt service was up by 18 per cent, capital expenditure performed below budget quite significantly.
“We are looking at the issue of procurement process and ways to speed up capital spending.
“In terms of overall balance of the budget, the fiscal deficit is expected to come down from N13.7 trillion to N9.2 trillion.
“Importantly, the deficit, the amount of the budget to be funded by borrowing, is down from 6.1 per cent to 3.9 per cent. That is, the percent of GDP and Capital expenditure remains at 32 per cent, so that is the whole structure of the budget.
“In the meantime, the efforts in tax side, to tax revenue as a percentage of GDP from its relatively low figure of under 10 per cent, is doubling now within two or three years to 18 per cent.”
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