The Federal Government on Thursday made a change from its earlier plan of drastically slashing the earlier passed N10.594trillion 2020 budget to N9trillion by reducing it with just about N85billion through a new proposal of N10.509trillion.
Consequently the earlier approved N2.4trillion for debts servicing in the 2020 fiscal year, is now jerked up to about N3trillion , specifically N2.951.710trillion .
As highlighted by President Muhamnadu Buhari to both Chambers of the National Assembly in separate letters to that effect, the newly proposed N10 .509trillion is predicated on oil price benchmark of $25per barrel as against $57per barrel fixed for the earlier one .
Other underlying assumptions of the revised N10,509trillion budget are 1.93million barrels oil production per day as against 2.3million barrel oil production per day earlier appproved exchange rate of N360 to a US dollar as against N305 to a US dollar earlier passed and approved .
Other critical components of the newly proposed N10.509trillion budget are N398.505 billion as statutory transfers , N4.928.525trillion as recurrent expenditure and N2.230.912trillion as capital expenditure .
The President in the letter explained further that aggregate revenue for funding the now revised 2020 budget is N5.09trillion which is 35% or N2.78trillion less than the one passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by him in December 2019.r
Part of the N85billion reduced from the earlier approved 2020 budget , is N11billion deducted from the N110billion capital votes allocated to the Judiciary in the previous budget .
The deduction was kicked against by the Chairman , Senate Committee on Judiciary , Human Rights and Legal Matters , Senator Micheal Opeyemi Bamidele ( APC Ekiti Central), during debate on general principles of the revised 2020 Appropriation bill .
Senator Bamidele in kicking against the proposal said the earlier votes of N110billion given the Judiciary was not in anyway , enough to drive efficiency within the arm of government , let alone , N99billion it is reduced to now.
