The Federal Government has told the Senate that it is considering returning to the National Assembly the N27.5 trillion 2024 Appropriation Bill to increase its size if revenue increases.
Speaking Monday in Abuja, when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of Economy, Wale Edun, told the committee led by Senator Sani Musa (APC, Niger East) said that because of the tremendous improvement in the economy and if the revenue increases, the federal government would have no other option than to return to the National Assembly to appropriate the additional revenue.
The Minister said, “The revenue performance was encouraging, and it is expected to continue. There is a fiscal policy and tax reform committee that is already at work. It is meant to provide fundamental change together with digitalization and greater efficiency in collection because it is revenue-to-debt that can allow us to increase this budget.
“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will come back, and I’m sure Mr President will authorize the process to return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue. That is a situation we are all looking forward to.
Recall that President Tinubu earlier presented before the National Assembly a total aggregate expenditure of N27.5 trillion in the 2024 Appropriation Bill, just as he had announced his administration’s resolve to adopt the “revised 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP)” as the parameters for the 2024 budget, just as he also announced the administration’s plan to grow the economy by a minimum of 3.76 per cent, above the forecasted world average.
President Tinubu, while presenting the N27.5 trillion 2024 Appropriation Bill tagged “Budget of renewed hope,” promised that the nation’s internal security architecture would be overhauled to enhance law enforcement capabilities to safeguard lives, property, and investments across the country.
Speaking further, Edun, who noted that the federal government was looking at how to speed up the procurement process to increase capital spending in the 2024 budget, said, “When we look at actual budget performance, expenditure as of the third quarter of the year, which is September, was 32 per cent below the budget estimate, and revenue was 5 per cent up.
“In the meantime, efforts have been made to raise tax revenue as a percentage of GDP from its relatively low figure of under 10 per cent, doubling now within 2 or 3 years to 18 per cent which is more than the African average, so that the government has enough money to spend, which it does not at the moment.