Pascal Arogorn Ibe
President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, signed the 2021 Appropriation Bill into law .
The brief signing ceremony was done inside the President ’ s office at the Presidential Villa , Abuja
The National Assembly had last Monday passed the N 13. 58 trn budget for the next fiscal year.
It has been the desire of the present regime to restore the country’ s budget to January to December cycle.
This was achieved with the 2020 budget with Buhari signing the document into law on December 17, 2019. This has been sustained with today’ s signing.
The National Assembly last Monday passed the 2021 Appropriation Bill , raising the total estimates from the proposed N 13. 08tn to N 13, 588, 027, 886, 175, an increase of over N 500bn.
The President had on October 8, 2020, laid the money bill before a joint session of the National Assembly.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives Committees on Appropriations had laid a harmonised report in the respective chambers as the National Assembly held special sessions mainly to pass the national budget ahead of the Christmas and New Year break .
Out of the total sum of N 13. 59tn for 2021, N 496. 53bn is for statutory transfers ; N 3. 32tn is for debt service ; N 5. 64tn is for recurrent ( non -debt) expenditure; while the sum of N 4. 13tn is for capital expenditure.
While statutory transfers totalling N 496. 53bn were approved , it was observed that the N 125bn proposed for the National Assembly and its affiliates had been raised by N 8. 99bn, putting the new total estimates at N 133. 99bn.
Details later …
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