Buhari to sign revised 2020 budget today

<!– Buhari to sign revised 2020 budget today –>

Buhari to sign revised 2020 budget today

By Ismaila Chafe

President Muhammadu Buhari will today sign into law the revised 2020 budget passed by the National Assembly in June.

The Personal Assistant on New Media to the President, Bashr Ahmad, confirmed this on his tweeter handle in Abuja on Thursday.

While the Senate passed the budget on 10 June, the House of Representatives passed it on 11 June.

Both chambers approved a budget of N10.8 trillion, more than the N10.523 trillion proposed by Federal Executive Council (FEC) on 13 May.

According to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, the budget is based on an oil benchmark price of $25, a far cry from the initial benchmark of $57 dollars.

Crude oil production per barrel has also been reduced from 2.18million to 1.94million per day.

“The federal government in this budget will have direct revenue of funding the budget of N5.158 billion. The deficit to this budget, N5.365 trillion and this will be financed by both domestic as well as foreign borrowing.

“The foreign borrowing we are doing for 2020 are all concessionary loans from the IMF, which has already been approved and has crystallized, from the World Bank, Islamic Development Bank as well as Afro EXZIM bank.

“There will also be some drawdown of previously committed loans for major ongoing projects that we will be drawing from both existing facilities as well as some special accounts with the approval of Mr. President and the National Assembly,’’ she said.

The new budget provides N2.48 trillion for capital expenditure and N4.942 trillion ass recurrent non-debt expenditure.

Others are N2.6 trillion for debt service and N2.9 trillion for sinking funds.