We may end up borrowing to finance 2019 budget, Nigerian govt cries out after NASS raised spendings to N8.92tn

The federal government has raised concerns over sourcing for fund to finance the additional N102.84 billion in the 2019 budget.

The gap was created after the National Assembly increased the budget by N90.3 billion.

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, expressed these worries at the Public presentation of the 2019 Budget in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to him, this development has consequently raised budgetary deficits by N58.83 billion, putting the government under pressure of how to fund this deficit and would likely lead to an increase in borrowings.

Udoma explained, “NASS increased the budget size from N8.83 trillion to N8.92 trillion translating to an increase of N90.3 billion. This resulted in an overall increase of N58.83 billion in deficit.

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“Inexplicably, NASS reduced the proposed borrowing from N1.649 trillion to N1.605 trillion thus creating an overall unfunded deficit of N102.83 billion. To fully fund the budget, the level of borrowing may therefore have to increase.”

Udoma added that the government was expecting to generate total revenues of N7 trillion to fund the 2019 budget; comprising N3.69 trillion from oil revenues and N3.31 trillion from non-oil revenues, while the deficit of N1.92 trillion would be financed mainly by borrowing N1.605 trillion split equally between the domestic and foreign markets.

Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday signed the N8.92 trillion appropriation bill into law, representing a N90.3 billion increment from the N8.83 trillion proposed by the Executive on December 12, 2018.

Udoma noted that allocations to some executive projects on critical appraisal and linked to the ERGP were reduced and a large number of new projects mainly constituency type projects were introduced.

The minister mentioned that the presidency would engage with the 9th National Assembly once it is constituted to address the budgetary quagmire.

By Babatunde Alao…

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