National Assembly passes N13.5tn 2021 budget, adjourns to Jan 26

A N13.5tn budget for the 2021 fiscal year has been passed by the Senate.

The House of Representatives also passed the 2021 budget on Monday with a slight increase.

In passing the budget, the Senate at its special plenary on Monday said it was predicated on oil benchmark of $40 per barrel.

Some of the budget’s components are N3.324tn for debt servicing; N4.1tn for capital expenditure; N5.6tn for recurrent and N496bn for statutory transfer. It also has an increment of N505bn.

President Muhammadu Buhari had presented N13.082tn budget estimates to the National Assembly on October 8.

The House of Representatives passed the N13.6tn 2021 budget on Monday.

This came after the adoption of a report by the House Committee on Appropriation presented  by its Chairman, Aliyu Betara (APC-Borno).

He said the bill would authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the sum of N13,588,027,886,175 of which N496.5bn would be for statutory transfers.

He added that N3.3bn was for debt servicing, while N5.6tn was earmarked for recurrent non-debt expenditure.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, said that ninth National Assembly passed the budget in record time to keep to the promise made during its inauguration.

“We will maintain this tempo so that our successors can continue from where we stopped,’’ he said.

The House adjourned its plenary session to January 26, 2021.