Jonathan signs 2014 budget

President Goodluck Jonathan has just signed the 2014 budget into law “after going through the statutory legislative processes”.

The signing of the budget is coming a few weeks after the presidency complained of distortions to the budget by the national assembly.

Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, will brief journalists on the budget later today.

TheCable will bring you details of the briefing.

Last week, Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, had attributed the delay in the president’s signing of the 2014 budget to distortions made by the National Assembly.

The actual budget figure presented by the president through Okonjo-Iweala, to the National Assembly on December 19, 2013, was N4.642 trillion. The National Assembly raised the figure to N4.695 trillion, which is N53 billion more than the actual figure.

The president’s proposal put recurrent expenditure at 2.4 trillion, but the national assembly altered it to N2.454 trillion. Likewise, capital expenditure that was put at 1.1 trillion by the president was changed to N1.119 trillion.

The highest sectors with the highest amount of funds allocated to them are education (N424.3bn) and defence (N349.7bn).
The national budget for 2013, which is higher than that of 2014, was N4.987 trillion.