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President writes Senate, Reps on budget cut

By on February 22, 2012

The shape of the slash in the 2012 Federal Government Budget emerged yesterday.

In a letter addressed separately to the National Assembly and read on the floors of the Senate and the House yesterday, President Goodluck Jonathan requested for a cut of N101 billion.

This will translate to a reduction of the overall budget estimate from N4.749 trillion to N4.632 trillion.

The government also increased the oil benchmark from $70 barrel to $75 a barrel.

Explaining the reason for the review of the budget and the 2012-2014 medium term expenditure framework, President Jonathan said: “Recent domestic developments, key among which was the partial withdrawal of subsidy on petroleum products and the ripple effect on the 2012-2014 medium term expenditure framework and the 2012 budget proposal which I presented to the National Assembly on December 13, 2011, necessitated the action.”

Capital expenditure proposal was reduced from N1.318 trillion to N1.281 trillion while recurrent expenditure was lowered from N2.471 trillion to N2.432 trillion.

The President sought N888 billion fuel subsidy allocation.

Some of the statutory transfers include the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which allocation was reduced from N40 billion to N35 billion; National Judicial Commission (NJC) allocation was reduced from N85 billion to N75 billion while Niger Delta allocation was slashed from N54 billion to N48 billion.

The Universal Basic Education (UBE) had its allocation cut from N68 billion to N63 billion.

The N150 billion allocated to the National Assembly is retained in the new revised budget.

A review of some of the sectoral allocations showed that the recurrent allocation of the Presidency was slashed to N25 billion from N27 billion, the Presidency’s capital allocation also went down to N14.68 billion from N15.8 billion.

The recurrent allocation to the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) was cut from N47 billion to N45 billion and its capital allocation reduced from N23.5 billion to N22 billion.

The recurrent allocation to defence, which includes the Ministry of Defence (MOD), Army, Navy and Air Force was increased from N291 billion to N296 billion. Its capital allocation went up from N34.67 billion to N35.967 billion.

The capital allocation to the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) was retained at N64 billion.

The Ministry of Education had its recurrent allocation slashed from N345 billion to N342 billion and its capital allocation reduced from N55.05 billion to N54.650billion.

Jonathan expressed gratitude for what he described as, “the enduring productive partnership between the National Assembly and the Executive arms of government in discharging our shared responsibility for nation-building and the patriotism, commitment and support that the distinguished members of the Senate have consistently demonstrated.”

Jonathan requested the Senate and the House to consider “A Bill for an Act to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the total sum of N4,648,849,156,932 only, of which N372,593,095,601 only is for statutory transfers, N559,580,000,000 only is for debt service, N2,432,432,108,877 only is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while the balance of N1,284,243,952,454 only is for contribution to development fund for the year ending on the 31st of December, 2012.”