President Muhammadu Buhari has yet to get a clean copy of the 2018 Appropriation Bill as passed into law by the two chambers of the National Assembly last week.
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, disclosed this to State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Udoma said there was no truth in some reports quoting him as saying that the President would not sign the document as passed by the federal lawmakers.
The minister stated, “The President has yet to receive the budget. It is therefore impossible to make a statement about the budget that has not been received.
“Once we get it, we will work very quickly on it. When it is submitted, I am sure the National Assembly will inform Nigerians.”
The minister said from all indications, the nation’s economy was improving with the current Gross Domestic Product growth rate of 1.95 per cent in the first quarter of this year.
The Senate at the plenary on Wednesday approved the Conference Committee’s report on the 2018 Appropriation Bill, which corrected errors in the versions passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly.
The errors bothered on grammar and syntax.
The National Assembly passed the N9.12tn budget last week Wednesday after the Appropriation Bill had spent more than six months with the legislature.
The final figure was raised by over N508bn from the initial estimates of N8.612tn that the President laid before lawmakers on November 7, 2017.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives, however, identified and corrected various errors in the bill, while the Committees on Appropriations of both chambers formed a conference committee to harmonise the corrections.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Danjuma Goje, presented the Conference Committee’s report.
The House of Representatives also on Wednesday adopted the harmonised report on the 2018 budget, preparatory to Buhari’s assent.
With the adoption of the report, the budget is set for transmission to the President.