Buhari writes national assembly, to present Budget 2018 Tuesday

President Muhammadu Buhari has written a letter to the national assembly, seeking to present the estimates of the 2018 budget.

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, read the letter at plenary on Thursday.

Buhari requested to present the budget to a joint session of the national assembly at 2pm on Tuesday.

Udoma Udo Udoma, minister of budget and national planning, had said the 2018 budget would be presented to the national assembly before the end of October.

“The MTEF outlines the federal government’s fiscal policies and our macroeconomic projections for the next three years from 2018 to 2020 and it provides the broad framework for the 2018 budget. We are committed to delivering the 2018 budget to the national assembly by the beginning of October,” Udoma had said in July.

The federal executive council had approved the proposed budget at its meeting which held on Thursday.

“We did promise that the budget will be ready in October and it will be ready in October. We are liaising with the national assembly because they have to approve the date for the president to come and address them to submit the budget,” he said after FEC’s approval.

“Before now we use to submit in December but now the budget is ready in October so there is a very big difference.”

According to the medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) and fiscal strategy paper (FSP), 43.2% of funds are projected to come from oil revenue, while 56.8% is to be earned from non-oil sources

According to the document, planned expenditure for 2018 is pegged at N8.6 trillion as against an estimated revenue of N5.65 trillion, resulting in a shortfall of approximately N3.52 trillion.

Oil benchmark for 2018 is estimated at $53 per barrel, up from the $44. 5 per barrel in the 2017 budget.