The Senate has passed the supplementary budget submitted to the National Assembly two weeks ago by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).
Buhari had proposed N895,842,465,917bn, but the Senate Committee on Appropriation, in its report presented by the Chairman, Barau Jibrin, increased the budget size N86,887,229,426 billion bringing the total to N982,729,695,343.
The breakdown showed that N123,332,174,164 is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure, while the sum of N859, 397,521,179 is for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure for the year ending on the 31st day of December, 2021.
Buhari had explained that the proposed amount would be used to fund the COVID-19 vaccine programme and health-related expenditures for treatment of additional 50,000 patients under the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS Programme in states.
He had also said that part of the money would be used to procure additional equipment captured in this year’s capital expenditure on Defence and Security to tackle prevalent security challenges across the country.
In the same vein, the Senate also approved the request of President Muhammadu, to borrow N2,343,387,942,848 trillion, as of part finance for the 2021 federal budget size of N13trn.
The Committee on Local and Foreign Loans recommended that the approval of Buhari’s request for the issuance of $3,000,000,000 but not more than $6,183,081,643.40, Eurobond in the International Capital Market.
The Committee also recommended that the Senate should approve that the amount authorised may be raised from multiple sources such as the International Capital Market and any other Multilateral or Bilateral sources as may be available.