The Senate on Wednesday has approved a total of N819.54billion domestic loan requested by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The approval was made during today’s session at the Red chamber.
This was sequel to the request for N819.54bn domestic loan meant to fix the infrastructure destroyed by floods across the country.
Buhari had through an executive communication last week, sought the approval of the National Assembly for N819.54bn supplementary budget.
The President had said the N819.54bn would form part of the 2022 Appropriation Act.
The Senate accordingly gave the request an expeditious consideration and passage by making it pass the required legislative processes within 30 mins.
President of the Senate, Senator Ahmed Lawan, in his remarks , said extension of the implementation period of the 2022 budget to March 31, 2023 , will provide the required time for implementation of the N819.5bn 2022 supplementary budget raised by the President.
The sum of N708bn was approved for the Ministry of Works and Housing; N69bn for the Ministry of Agriculture; N30bn for the Federal Capital Territory and N15bn for the Ministry of Water Resources.
With the approval, the 2022 Budget deficit has increased to N8.17trn, and deficit-to-GDP ratio of 4.43 per cent.
It has also pushed the country’s domestic debt to over N22 trn.
The new borrowing also increased the Federal Government’s domestic borrowing in 2022 to N3.33trn.
On the other hand, the House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the 2023 appropriation bill, raising the N20.51 trillion budget presented by Buhari to N21.82 trillion.
This followed the consideration and approval of the report of the House committee on appropriation at plenary by the committee on supply which showed an increase of over N1 trillion proposed estimates of the executive.
Out of the total sum, N967.48 billion is for statutory transfers, N6.55 trillion is for debt service, N8.32 trillion is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while the sum of N5.97 trillion is for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure for the year ending on the 31st day of December, 2023.
