The senate on Thursday passed the revised 2020 budget of N10,805,544,664,642 a day after members of the house of representatives approved the same figure.
The breakdown of the figure shows that the sum of N2,488,789,433,344 is for capital expenditure and recurrent non-debt expenditure has N4,942,269,241,984.
The executive also allocated N422,775,979,362 for statutory transfer, while N2,951,710,000,000 was budgeted for debt service.
In the same vein, N500 billion was earmarked as intervention funds for the fight against COVID-19, while the health sector got N186 billion allocation.
In the revised budget, the N301billion was added to the earlier proposal made by the executive due to the country’s poor revenue and economic standing especially against the backdrop of the outbreak of the Coronavirus, COVID-19 pandemic.
The N301billion came from increases made on Capital expenditure proposal that was increased from N2.230 trillion to N2.488 trillion, recurrent expenditure was raised from the earlier proposed N4.928trillion to N4.942trillion and statutory transfers increased from N398.505billion to N428.033, totalling N301billion.
The passage of the revised figure, which is to be issued from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, followed the consideration of the report of the Senate Committee on Appropriations on the Appropriation Act (Amendment) Bill, 2020.
Meanwhile, critical highlights of the revised budget proposal forwarded to NASS by President Buhari two weeks ago like N2.951trillion debt servicing and N500billion as intervention fund for COVID-19 were retained, just like the N360 to a US dollar exchange rate.
In his remarks after the passage of the budget, the President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan who charged Senate Committees to ensure strict oversight of projects contained in the 2020 budget, said that getting value for money is one way of ensuring that Nigerians are impacted positively through government interventions and Programmes.
Lawan said, “For us, this is one way of ensuring that Nigerians feel the presence of government through the various interventions, the programmes, and projects. We have done this, but we have other things waiting for us in relation to this.
“We are supposed to ensure that we oversight on these projects, and more especially when we have to borrow money to fund some of these projects, it is very crucial that we ensure there is value for money.”
“Every project that is mentioned here should be implemented appropriately and accordingly. So, all our standing committees should ensure that we continue to carry out our oversight”, the Senate President added.
The budget will become operational when President Muhammadu Buhari gives his assent to it.
