By Nuel Suji – Following the decision of the Federal Government to roll over the 2017 capital budget provisions to the 2018 budget proposal, Senate President, Bukola Saraki has said that the next budget would be around N10 trillion, warning the Executive arm to take note of such move.
Saraki who gave the hint while making remarks on the report of Joint Committees on Finance and Appropriations on implementation of 2017 budget also said that there is no pending loan request in the Senate.
According to him, if you are taken about 50 percent of capital projects to next year budget it means you are talking about N10 trillion budget I hope executive is taken note.
He said, “Let me also clarify this because I was involved by the Chairman of Appropriations; that when the Minister of Finance came, she suggested that there were some requests before us on external borrowing.
“I just want to make it clear that there is no request on external borrowing that has not been acted upon. It must be that the letters have not left the Executive to come to us.
“I think it is important that we don’t delay such an important issue.
If you remember, at the end of last session – on the last day, we treated requests from the states and those on the railways.
“There are no pending requests from Mr. President or, when he was away, from the Acting President on external loan.”
Earlier, the Red Chamber adopted all the recommendations of the committee apart from the first recommendation which was stepped down by the lawmakers.
The first recommendation in the report, which read, “The committee wishes to recommend that the issue of external borrowing be resolved with the executive without further delay.”
