The federal government has given a hint of possible increments to the estimate for the 2024 budget if the revenue side increases.
Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, disclosed this today when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had recently, formally presented a budget estimate of N27.5 trillion to the joint sitting of both chambers of the National Assembly.
Edun, who claimed that there is tremendous improvement in federal government revenue, said the Finance Ministry would be coming back to seek the Parliament appropriation of the extra money that would accrue to it as a result of improved efficiency in revenue collection.
He said: “The revenue performance was encouraging, here we see that the revenue performance was encouraging , it is expected to continue to be encouraging. There is a fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work. It is meant to provide fundamental change together with digitalization, greater efficiency in collection because it is revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.
“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will be coming back, and I am sure Mr. President will authorise the process of return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue; that is a situation we are all looking forward to.”
Edun said that the federal government is looking at how to speed up the procurement process in order to increase capital spending in the 2024 budget.
He added: “When we look at actual budget performance, expenditure as at 3rd quarter of the year which is September, was 32 percent below the budget estimate, revenue was 5 percent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging , debt service, because of change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency and the fact we have Foreign Debt about $46bn outstanding, means that debt service was up by 18 percent, capital expenditure perform below budget quite significantly, we are looking at issue of procurement process and ways to speed up capital spending, in terms of overall balance of the budget, fiscal deficit is expected to come down from N13.7 trillion to N9.2 trillion and importantly, the deficit, the amount of the budget to be funded by borrowing is down from 6.1 percent to 3.9 percent that is percent of Gross Domestic Product and Capital expenditure remains at 32 percent so that is the whole structure of the budget.
“In the meantime, the efforts in tax side to tax revenue as a percentage of GDP from its relatively low figure of under 10 percent, doubling now within 2 or 3 years to 18 percent which is more of African average so that the government has enough money to spend which it does not at the moment.”
Chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Musa, in his closing remarks urged the Finance Ministry to ensure that the Budget meets the expectations of Nigerians, particularly the downtrodden.
He said: “Nigeria today has found itself in a delicate situation, the high rate of unemployment and you know this is a transition period, it is a new government. So, we must give Nigerians the right budget. What is the right budget? We must look at our revenue projections, we look at our performances and then look at what we are committing ourselves to by the time this budget is passed, it has become an act and once it becomes a law, we want to make sure before we even pass the budget we have really checked the budget.”
