Senate passes 2019 budget

The Senate has passed the 2019 appropriation bill.

The passage follows the presentation of a report by the chairman senate committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje.

The budget was increased from N8.83 trillion presented by President Muhammadu Buhari to N8.916 trillion.

Mr Goje said the need to provide for the severance benefits of outgoing lawmakers, their aides, provision for the National Assembly orientation programme, election, and others accounted for the about N86 billion increase.

“There is also the need to provide more fund for the security and intelligence agencies to deal with additional, emerging, unforeseen challenges in the country,” he said.

He said all of these were not captured in the 2019 budget submitted by the president.

The breakdown

The Senate passed the budget with the breakdown as follows:

Statutory transfer – N502.58 .billion

Debt service – N2.25 trillion

Recurrent expenditure – N4.65 trillion

Capital expenditure – N2.94 trillion