Senate passes revised MTEF, reduces 2022 budget size by N60bn

The senate has passed a revised version of the medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) and fiscal strategy paper (FSP) for the 2022 budget.

The MTEF and FSP are parameters on which any budget is framed.

In the revised MTEF, President Muhammadu Buhari jerked up the total expenditure of the federal government in the 2022 fiscal year to N16.45 trillion.

Buhari had explained that the needed adjustments were important to reflect “the new fiscal terms in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA)”.

In July, the federal executive council (FEC) had approved N13.98 trillion for the proposed 2022 budget sum before the PIA was passed.

After working on Buhari’s request, the senate committee on finance pegged the federal government’s total expenditure at N16.39 trillion, reducing what the president sent by N60 billion.

While Buhari had pegged the fiscal deficit at N692.0 billion, the senate put it at N635.4 billion.

The senate fixed the retained revenue of the federal government at N10.3 trillion, but the president sent the sum of N10.13 trillion for approval.

The upper legislative chamber retained the provisions of N100 billion to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 2023 polls and N54 billion for the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).

“The budget office of the federation leveraged the senate and house committees on finance recommendation that all revenue generating agencies must remit their revenue to the consolidated revenue fund (CRF) or they will not be captured in the 2022 budget proposal,” Solomon Adeola, chairman of the finance committee, said.

The budget size was reduced after recommendations in a report presented by Adeola were passed.