By Kayode Araba.
The Nigerian Senate has passed the medium-term expenditure framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP), for 2024-2026, a set of assumptions that will be used to prepare the country’s budget over the next three years.
Thus, the Upper Chamber approved the document with a borrowing plan of 7.8 trillion naira for 2024, nine trillion naira deficit and Federal Government total expenditure of 26 trillion naira and Senate approved the benchmark oil price of $73.96, $73.76 and $69.90 per barrel for 2024, 2025, and 2026 respectively also the Senate resolved that all items locally produced should be banned from importation.
These approvals were sequel to the consideration and adoption of the recommendations in the report of 2024–2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) at Wednesday’s plenary in report which was presented by Senator Sani Musa and considered by the Committee of Supply with Godswill Akpabio as chairman and adopted in plenary.
The joint committee chaired by Senator Sani observed that a significant number of the Federal Government’s revenue-generating agencies engaged in arbitrary, frivolous and extra-budgetary expenditure and recommended that a review of the laws of all revenue generating agencies be carried out.
Another recommendation that attracted a debate was the recommendation that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) work towards reducing its production and operational costs to increase available government revenue. After the polarised arguments, the resolution was adopted unaltered.
After the debate that lasted for about five hours, President of the Senate, Akpabio, announced an approval for 2024-2026 MTEF/FSP, the oil price benchmark of 73 dollars per barrel of crude oil, 1.78 million barrels per day and sustained as contained in the MTEF/FSP documents, special intervention (recurrent) of 200 billion naira, special intervention(capital) of 7 billion naira and and an exchange rate of 700 naira to a US dollar.
