2019 Budget: National Assembly Creates N102.83bn Funding Gap

• 2019 Budget: National Assembly Creates N102.83bn Funding Gap

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udoma, on Tuesday said the National Assembly created a funding gap of N102.83 billion.

Udoma said the gap was as a result of the adjustments made by the National Assembly to the approved budget.

The minister said NASS created funding gap by adding to the size of the 2019 budget while at the same time reducing proposed borrowing.

“Executive revenue assumptions were generally approved and adopted by NASS, except for unexplained increases totalling N31.5 billion on some non-oil revenue lines.

“NASS increased the budget size from N8.83 trillion to N8.92 trillion translating to an increase of N90.33 billion.

“This has resulted in an overall increase of N58.83 billion in deficit. Inexplicably, NASS reduced the proposed borrowing from N1.649 trillion to N1.605 trillion, thus creating an overall unfunded deficit of N102.83 billion.

“To fully fund the budget, the level of borrowing may, therefore, have to increase.”

According to him, the overall budget deficit is now N1.918 trillion as against N1.859 trillion stipulated in the original proposed budget.