N’Assembly to pass N4.648tn 2012 budget next week

The Committees of the National Assembly are expected to conclude their work on the 2012 Appropriation Bill this week following amendments by the Executive.

It was learnt on Sunday that the Committees on Appropriation of both chambers would likely submit their reports this week preparatory to the plenary next week.

A deadline was by the National Assembly issued two weeks ago for the committees to forward their reports to the Appropriation Committees of the National Assembly.

The deadline had to be extended indefinitely after the Federal Government revised and re-presented the bill to the National Assembly.

Leader of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, said on Sunday that the delay in putting together the budget was caused by the amendment made to the bill earlier submitted by President Goodluck Jonathan.

He noted that the budget could be passed by both chambers of the National Assembly next week, given that work had reached conclusive stages.

He said, "You know that we have been working on the reviewed details submitted after we would have passed the first version.

"Hopefully, the budget will be passed next week, so that we can put that behind us."

The revised proposal represented a N101bn slash in the N4.749tn earlier presented to the National Assembly for consideration.

Details of the budget showed that N1.319tn projected for capital project was cut down to N1.28tn, just as N2.471tn recurrent expenditure in the earlier proposal was pruned down to N2.432tn.

The cut did not adversely affect the security agencies such as the police, defence formations and the office of the National Security Adviser.

A look at some of the sectoral allocations revealed that the Ministry of Defence and its agencies, which received N325bn in the first version, had its allocation increased by N6.29bn.

Also the Police formation which had received N307.8bn in the earlier version, retained the same figure in the revised version.

The same applied to the NSA Office which retained its N124.3bn allocation.

Allocation to the education which had been N400.06bn was reduced by N3.4bn.

The Presidency also had its allocation cut from N43.3bn to N39.68bn, while the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation also had a cut from N70.55bn to N67bn.