The federal government will present the 2019 budget to the National Assembly in September in a bid to restore the January to December budget cycle.
Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, confirmed this in Abuja,
The minister said the federal government had consulted widely with members of the National Assembly in that regard.
The presentation of the last two budgets could not achieve that threshold. The president presented the 2017 fiscal document to the lawmakers in the second week of December 2016 while that of 2018 was presented in the first week of November, 2017.
Speaking on the current effort, the minister said: “Our aspirations is that we want to meet the requirements of the law to submit it by September but as you know the National assembly is itself away on recess and they resume by September.”
She said the law encourages the executive to submit the budget by September and the idea is that by December, the budget is passed.
The Minister also said the N1.56 trillion spent by the federal government on capital projects was the highest amount ever spent on capital projects in the history of Nigeria.
She said the federal government released 60 per cent of the total N2.2 trillion budgeted for capital projects in 2017, being the highest value ever spent in the country.
The Minister said the 2017 budget did well as the country executed 100 per cent of the personnel component, ensuring that salaries and pensions were paid, including pension arrears.
She said Nigeria’s projected revenue was about N5 trillion, but was only able to generate N2.7 trillion, or 54 per cent of the total.
The underperformance in the revenue was not in the oil and gas sector, she stated.
She said despite the fact that production did not go up to the 2.3 million barrels per day projected for the year, oil and gas sector revenue hit 95 per cent largely due to increase in oil price in the international market.
“Non-oil revenue performance was not as high as we had expected,” the Minister said.
