'2024 budget will be passed on December 30th' - Speaker

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, has announced that the 2024 budget is scheduled for passage on Saturday, December 30, 2023.

The announcement was made during the resumption of the House’s plenary on Tuesday, December 19.

During the session, the Speaker told various House committees, emphasizing the need for them to conclude and submit their reports on the budget defence by government agencies before 8 pm on December 19, 2023.

The speaker highlighted that subsequent budget-related activities, such as compilation, processing, and harmonization, would occur in the interim.

It is noteworthy that plenary had been suspended on December 1 to facilitate the budget proposal defence, aiming for the expeditious passage of the budget.

In November, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu proposed a budget of N27.5 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year. The budget underwent scrutiny and deliberations in a joint session of the National Assembly for final approval.

What you should know

The statement from the Speaker of the lower house of the National Assembly speaks to the need to achieve a January to December budget cycle. President Tinubu had insisted in the past to ensure the 2024 Appropriation bill comes into effect from Jan 1st, 2024.

Since 2019, Nigeria has been able to maintain the January to December putting an end to the days where the budget is usually passed deep into the next fiscal year. This goes a long way to stifle budget performance for the year.

The 2024 budget presented to the National Assembly has the following key assumptions- projected revenue generation of N18.32 trillion, and N9.92 trillion while capital expenditure is N8.7 trillion. Also, the benchmark price of crude oil as set in the budget is $77.96 per barrel and a daily crude oil production of 1.7mb together with an exchange rate of N750 to the USD.