The Federal Government has revealed the possibility of revisiting the National Assembly next year to obtain approval from lawmakers for a supplementary budget in the event of surpassing revenue projections.
QUEST TIMES reports that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s N27.5 trillion 2024 appropriation bill is currently being considered by the federal legislature.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, stated this during an address to a joint sitting of the National Assembly Committee on Finance. Edun informed lawmakers of a significant upturn in the country’s revenue profile over recent months. He stated that if this positive revenue trajectory continued, the FG might find it necessary to approach the National Assembly once again to seek lawmakers’ approval for a supplementary budget accommodating the additional revenue.
He said, “The revenue performance was encouraging, here we see that the revenue profile is encouraging. It is expected that it will continue to be encouraging. There is a fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work.
“It is meant to provide fundamental changes together with digitalization and greater efficiency in collection because it is revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.
“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will be coming back, and I am sure Mr. President will authorize the process to return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue. That is a situation we are all looking forward to.”
Edun said the federal government was already 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 the actual budget performance, expenditure as of the third quarter of the year, which is September, was 32 percent below the budget estimate.
“Revenue was five percent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging because of a change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency, and the fact we have foreign debt of about $46 billion outstanding.
“This means that debt service was up by 18 percent, capital expenditure performed below budget quite significantly.
“We are looking at the issue of procurement process and ways to speed up capital spending.
“In terms of overall balance of the budget, the fiscal deficit is expected to come down from N13.7 trillion to N9.2 trillion.
“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, the percent of GDP and Capital expenditure remains at 32 percent, so that is the whole structure of the budget.
“In the meantime, the efforts in tax side, to tax revenue as a percentage of GDP from its relatively low figure of under 10 percent, is doubling now within two or three years to 18 percent.”