Reps to revise N4.9tr budget

THE House of Representatives is set to review the N4.9 trillion 2011 appropriation bill, which both chambers of the National Assembly passed in March.
Briefing journalists on the issues that will take the attention of the House as it resumes plenary session today, the Chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Solomon Ita-Enang, said that the House would look at the progress of the budget bill and take an appropriate legislative action.
Enang said: “We will also consider the progress made so far on the process of the 2011 Appropriation Bill to see whether there are issues and challenges relating to all that, and then we will address them.”
But asked whether the House would consider overriding the President and pass the budget bill into law to avoid further delay, Ita-Enang said the House would not consider that option because the President had not written to inform it that he would not assent to it.
“We cannot say that the House will override the delay unless the President communicates to us that he has received and will not attend to it. That is why I said to you that we will look at the progress of the process,” Enang said.
Shortly after the N4.9 trillion 2011 budget bill was passed and sent to the President, the Minister of Finance, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, publicly declared that President Jonathan would not assent to the bill because it was not implementable.
“The 2011 budget is supposed to signal the beginning of fiscal consolidation, but we now have another expansionary budget which is not implementable. If we are to build our economy on a solid foundation and avoid the boom and burst of the past, it is critical that we embrace discipline in the way we manage public finances. We cannot continue like this,” the minister had said.
“If you adopt pro-cyclical fiscal policies then you go into boom and burst all the time so you need to have consistent robust fiscal policies that are relevant to your economy. The level of recurrent expenditure is unsustainable. Unless we deal with that we cannot deal with the problem of allocation to capital projects.”
Ita-Enang also disclosed that the House would prioritise its activities within the four weeks that it has left in this session.
He equally disclosed that the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and the Evidence Bill were among the bills that will be passed within the period.

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