NASS begins downward review of 2020 budget

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Works, Mohammed Adamu Aliero, said on Sunday the National Assembly has commenced moves for the downward review of the 2020 budget following the fall in the price of crude in the international market.

Aliero, who stated this in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, while inspecting the work on the Port Harcourt/Aba Road project, insisted that the review of the budget would be downward.

According to him, 30 percent of the pension funds would be used for completion of project, while the fund would be recovered through toll collections.

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Aliero said: “We are currently reviewing the budget but the percentage of the review I cannot say now. It is after the National Assembly has received a request from the executive arm of the government that we will deliberate on it.

“There is a proposal which is now before the Economic Council that part of the N9 trillion pension fund should be used in funding some of the infrastructures, particularly the road projects.

“When the proposal is approved by government, it will be sent to the National Assembly and this would be approved immediately because we know that there is infrastructural deficit in Nigeria particularly road infrastructure.

“And if we rely on annual budgeting, the money will not be enough to rehabilitate these infrastructures. So we need extra funds either by way of raising a bond or by way of using pension funds.

“We will not use up 30 percent of the pension funds. The pension money has been kept over some periods of time and when we use about 30 percent, we will generate it back by constructing toll gates and from the money realized from the tolls, we will pay it back.”

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