The House of Representatives has passed the 2022 Appropriation Bill and the 2021 Finance Bill. In passing the bill, the House raised the total estimates of the Federal Government’s budget from the proposed N16.39 trillion submitted by the President to N17.12 trillion.
The passage followed the consideration of the reports by House Committee on Appropriation and the Committee on Finance on the bills, respectively.
The House of Representatives also increased the oil benchmark as submitted by the president from $57 per barrel to $62 per barrel despite uncertainty in the global oil market due to the omicron variant of COVID-19 among other challenges such as spill and vandalism which has recently become increasingly persistent in the oil-rich regions of the country.
The oil benchmark increment, therefore, jacked up the 2022 budget which leaves an increased worry as to whether or not the pegged benchmark is truly visible.
However, while the major capital, recurrent, debt service, statutory transfers remain untouched, the House made provision for an increase of N400 billion for agencies that came forward with financial reports which were not captured in the proposed budget. Some of those agencies or ministry include INEC, Ministries of Humanitarian Affairs, the National Assembly, among others.
Recall that INEC had requested an additional N305 billion to the annual N40 billion budget to execute the 2023 general elections. Of the N305 billion, the INEC boss yesterday told the Senate Committee on Appropriation that it had received a sum of N100 billion.
In the newly passed budget, the lawmakers also made provision for 10 per cent of monies recovered by EFCC and the National Financial Intelligence Unit to be utilised by the agencies for their operations in order to strengthen their fight against corruption.
Similarly, the budget deficit was increased by N98 billion to accommodate some other requests of national importance which have not been captured in the budget estimates and which could not be covered by the revenue increase.
