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Senate, House fail to resolve oil benchmark controversy

By BusinessNews Staff on December 13, 2013

President Goodluck Jonathan’s plan to present the 2014 budget to the National Assembly before the end of year suffered a setback on Wednesday as the conference committee meeting on the harmonisation of the oil benchmark for the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework ended in deadlock.

The committee was set up by both chambers of the National Assembly to harmonise their differences on the crude oil benchmark for the 2014 budget.

But at its meeting on Wednesday, the two chambers maintained their respective earlier positions.

While the Senate insisted on $76.5 per barrel of crude oil, the House of Representatives held on to its earlier stand of $79 per barrel.

Our correspondent learnt that members of the House of Representatives even walked out on their counterparts from the Senate as a result of the controversy.

The conference committee held its inaugural sitting on Tuesday but both chambers did not agree on an acceptable oil benchmark for the 2014 budget.

A member of the committee, who craved anonymity, expressed fears that the inability of the two chambers to shift grounds might stall the attempt by Jonathan to present the budget this year.

“The situation is dicey now; there may be no budget this year. In fact, the House members walked out of the meeting in anger. You will recall that we passed the 2013 budget last year,” the source said.

Although the source said the meeting would resume for the third time today (Thursday), he expressed doubts about the possibility of the two chambers agreeing on a uniformed position based on the mood at the meeting.

He said, “Tomorrow will be Thursday; if we fail to reach any compromise as usual, then we will be talking of next week. The year is almost gone.”

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, who is also a member of the committee, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, could not be reached for comments on Wednesday.

He had told our correspondent on Tuesday the meeting was fruitful but added that no agreement had been reached yet.

Abaribe had said, “The committee met today (Tuesday) and had fruitful discussions, adjourned for further talks tomorrow (Wednesday). As I said, the meeting adjourned to tomorrow. We have not agreed on the benchmark.”

The PUNCH had reported that a serious crack had occurred among members of the House of Representatives over the crude oil benchmark for the 2014 budget.

[Punch]

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