Buhari Presents N10.33trn Budget for 2020

• Buhari Presents N10.33trn Budget for 2020

President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday presented N10.33 trillion ($33.8 billion) budget for 2020 to the National Assembly.

The proposed budget tagged ‘Budget of Sustaining Growth and Job Creation’ is N1.4 trillion higher than the N8.91 trillion approved by the National Assembly for the 2019 fiscal year.

The Ministry of Works and Housing received the highest allocation of N262 billion, the highest of all the ministries.

Power, Transportation and Defence followed with N123 billion, N112 billion and N100 billion, respectively.

Education was allocated N48 billion while Health would receive N46 billion.

Buhari said: “An aggregate sum of N2.46tn (inclusive of N318.06bn in statutory transfers) is proposed for capital projects in 2020.

“Although the 2020 capital budget is N721.33bn (or 23 per cent) lower than the 2019 budget provision of N3.18tn, it is still higher than the actual and projected capital expenditure outturns for both the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, respectively.”

According to him, at 24 per cent of aggregate projected expenditure, the 2020 provision falls short of the 30 per cent target in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan 2017-2020.

“The main emphasis will be the completion of as many ongoing projects as possible, rather than commencing new ones. The MDAs have not been allowed to admit new projects into their capital budget for 2020, unless adequate provision has been made for the completion of all ongoing projects,” the president stated.

President said, “Although government’s actual spending has reduced, our plans to leverage private sector funding through our tax credit schemes will ensure our capital programmes are sustained.

“For example, we launched the Road Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme, pursuant to which I have approved the construction and rehabilitation of 19 roads and bridges of 794.4km across 11 states. Indeed, the scheme has attracted private investment of over N205bn and the first set of tax credits are being processed by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning.

“Under the Presidential Power Initiative, we will modernise the national grid in three phases; starting from five gigawatts to 7GW, then to 11GW by 2023, and finally 25GW afterwards in collaboration with the German Government and Siemens.”