The Federal Government, on Wednesday explained that the 2014 budget has not been assented to by President Goodluck Jonathan because of serious ‘distortions’ included in it by the National Assembly.
Addressing State House correspondents after yesterday’s Federal Executive Council, FEC meeting, the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, said the areas of distortions were being looked into by the executive arm of government because of the negative impact they might have on the implementation.
The Senate and the House of Representatives had passed the fiscal bill on April 9 and 10 respectively, trillion for capital spending in 2014 while revenue projection from oil sales is anchored as an estimated production of 2.3 million barrels of crude oil per day.
The delay in the passage of the bill was largely caused by the disagreement between the legislature and the executive arms of government on the appropriate oil benchmark to adopt, which made the president to suspend the scheduled presentation of the bill to the National Assembly on November 12, 2013.
The executive had proposed a $74 per barrel oil benchmark in the 2014 – 2016 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Policy (FSP) document, submitted earlier to the National Assembly but the Senate and the House of Representatives preferred different figures which were higher than what the executive recommended.
While the Senate adopted $78 per barrel as the benchmark for the budget, the House went for $80. But after weeks of disagreement, the two chambers harmonised their conflicting positions and adopted $79 per barrel as the recommended oil benchmark for the budget. This, however, did not resolve the disagreement with the executive which preferred its $74 oil benchmark recommendation as contained in MTEF and FSP.
The disagreement dragged on until December 17, 2013 when the two chambers of the National Assembly were able to resolve their differences and pegged the oil benchmark at $77.5 per barrel, paving the way for the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala, to lay the budget before the lawmakers on December 19, 2013.
Maku said it was sad that mid-way into the year, the 2014 budget was not yet ready for implementation, assuring that everything was being done to resolve the problems.
“The Minister of Finance briefed us today at the FEC relating to the progress on the budget. It is very sad that we have almost entered the middle of the year and we don’t have a budget.
“This indeed is sad that the budget has taken so long in coming and practically we have less than seven months to execute the budget.
”We will do everything possible to reconcile the few differences that emerged in what was transmitted to the government by the National Assembly.”
”There are few areas of distortions and there are those areas that are very serious and we think there is a need to look into them because of the negative impact those distortions may have on the implementation of the budget.
”There is a lot of conversation going on now between the Federal Ministry of Finance and the National Assembly on these issues. And very shortly we believe that we are going to reconcile those areas and then the final budget will be announced to the nation by the President,” Maku said
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