WED, NOV 29 2023-theGBJournal| ”The National Assembly will ensure that the 2024 budget includes concrete strategies for sustainable debt management, including measures to increase revenue and control expenditure,” says the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Abbas Tajudeen.
To achieve that, Abbas said, the National Assembly will ensure that focus will be on raising more revenue through tax reform, fiscal reform, subsidy reform, foreign exchange convergence, and centralised revenue collection.
”In our recent engagement with MDAs on the MTEF, we emphasised the need for revenue-generating agencies to double their targets to meet the N18trn revenue projected in the budget,” he said.
The statement is included in the vote of thanks he delivered after the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu presented the 2024 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly on Wednesday.
The President’s 2024 Appropriation Bill, has an aggregate expenditure of N27.5 trillion, of which the non-debt recurrent expenditure is N9.92 trillion while debt service is projected to be N8.25 trillion and capital expenditure is N8.7 trillion.
He also assured the President of accelerated consideration of the budget.
”While we would give it accelerated consideration, we will diligently scrutinise it alongside Nigerians to ensure that when it is passed, it will be a budget that best addresses the most critical needs of our people.”
Meanwhile, the Speaker warned that the budget should not be seen as a mere financial document but a reflection of ”our collective resolve to address the most critical needs of our long-suffering citizens.”
He also argued that in order to promote economic growth and development, the 2024 Budget should prioritise social welfare programmes to help reduce poverty and inequality.
”Equally important is job creation and youth empowerment in view of the large and ever-growing youth population. Failure to do this means failure to invest in our future. Failure to do this means failure to invest in our future.”
His wish list in the budget include the prioritisation of investment in education and healthcare, which he says is critical to human capital development and a more productive workforce and infrastructure development, which is crucial for economic growth.
”The biggest challenge, however, is balancing these priorities within the constraints of available resources,” he noted.
Tajudeen assured the President that the National Assembly will also work to institutionalise pre-budget engagements with the executive to further improve and hasten the budget process.
He highlighted some of the perennial problems that have hampered the budget process in Nigeria, including failure to meet the expectations of improved service delivery and development, largely due to challenges relating to budget enactment, budget implementation and budget oversight.
Against this backdrop, he called for reform of the process saying, ”the well-known gaps in the various stages of the budget process underscore the need for budget reforms, including altering relevant sections of the Constitution and existing laws to strengthen the budget process and transform our budget into an authentic tool for development.
For this reason, I propose enacting a Budget Act to strengthen the budget process and promote development outcomes. This is a well-established practice in democracies across the world.”
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