The Federal Government has informed the Senate that it is contemplating returning the N27.5 trillion 2024 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly to adjust the size if the revenue increases.

Speaking yesterday in Abuja, when he appeared before the Senator Sani Musa (APC, Niger East) led Committee   on Finance for budget defence, the Minister   of Finance and Coordinating MInister of Economy, Mr. Wale Edun said that because of the tremendous   improvement in the economy,   and if the revenue increases, the Federal Government would have no other option than to return to the   National Assembly to appropriate the additional revenue.  

The Minister said: “The revenue performance was encouraging, it is expected to continue to be encouraging. There is   fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work. It is meant to provide fundamental change together with digitalization, greater efficiency in collection because it revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.

“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will come back  and am sure Mr President will authorise the process is return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue. That is a situation we are all looking forward.”

Recall that President Tinubu had penultimate   Wednesday presented before the National Assembly a expenditure proposal of N27.5 trillion 2024 Appropriation   Bill, just as he announced his administration’s resolve to adopt the “revised 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, and Fiscal Strategy Paper, FSP,” as the parameters for the 2024 budget, just as he also announced the administration’s plan to grow the economy by a minimum of 3.76 percent, above the forecasted world average. 

Speaking   further,   Edun noted that the Federal Government was looking at how to speed up the procurement process in order to increase capital spending in the 2024 budget.

He said: “When we look at actual budget performance , expenditure as at 3rd quaters of the year which is September,   was 32 percent below the budget estimate, revenue was five percent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging, debt service, because of change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency and the fact we have foreign debt of about $46billion outstanding, means that debt service was up by 18 percent.

Capital expenditure performed below budget quite significantly. We are looking at issue of procurement process and ways to speed up capital spending, in term of overall balance of the budget.

Fiscal deficit is expected to come down from N13.7 trillion to N9.2 trillion and importantly, the deficit, the amount of the budget to be funded by borrowing is down from   6.1 percent to 3.9 percent that is percent of GDP and Capital expenditure remains at 32 percent, so that is the while structure of the budget.”