Following the passing of N13.58tn budget for next year by the National Assembly last Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari had proposed to sign the 2021 Appropriation Bill into law on Thursday 31st December 2020.
According to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, who confirmed this on Tuesday evening, “All things being equal (and note this), the President will sign the 2021 budget into law on Thursday. It is not likely that the plan will change though“.
The budgets that had been passed by the National Assembly had also been transmitted to the President, then made available to ministers to scrutinise the document to ensure that what was returned was the same thing sent to the lawmakers.
The 2021 Appropriation Bill raised, estimated from the proposed N13.08tn to N13.59tn, an increase of over N500bn. The President laid the money bill before a joint session of the National Assembly on the 8th of October 2020.
Breaking it down, out of the total sum of N13.59tn for 2021, N496.53bn is for statutory transfers; N3.32tn is for debt service; N5.64tn is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure; while the sum of N4.13tn is for capital expenditure. The statutory transfers which amounted to N496.53bn were approved, while it was observed that the N125bn that had been proposed for the National Assembly and its affiliates had been raised by N8.99bn, putting the new total estimates at N133.99bn.
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