The House of Representatives on Thursday passed the 2016-2018 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, retaining $38 as the crude oil benchmark for the 2016 budget.
The approved benchmark was in the original document presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari on December 9.
The Federal Government plans to spend N6.04tn as the aggregate budget for 2016.
The House approved the MTEF as it considered the report of its joint Committees on Finance, Appropriations and Aids/Loans/Debt Management, which worked on the presidential proposals.
However, lawmakers expunged two recommendations from the report on the grounds that they were not contained in the original MTEF document.
The first recommendation that was expunged urged “that the implementation of Treasury Single Account with e-collection platform should be sustained.”
The House Majority Leader, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, who drew the attention of the House to the report, argued that since TSA was not contained in the original document, it should be deleted from the report.
“The MTEF document did not reflect TSA. There was nowhere in the MTEF that TSA was included,” he added.
The House resolved to delete TSA from the report, though it did not imply that it was against the policy on TSA.
The second recommendation expunged was “that arrears of 2015 budget fuel subsidy for domestic consumption, as proposed in the MTEF, be sustained.”
Again, the House observed that the MTEF was for 2016-2018; hence, it was improper to accommodate arrears of 2015 fuel subsidy in it.
The House Minority Leader, Mr. Leo Ogor, who pointed out the “anomaly,” recalled that the National Assembly had already approved payments for the 2015 fuel subsidy in the 2015 supplementary budget.
Ogor reminded members that the President initially proposed N413.3bn for fuel subsidy claims in the supplementary budget.
He added that an additional N108.9bn was later brought to cover all claims up to December 31.
He explained that any further mention of fuel subsidy should come by way of fresh proposals for 2016 in the 2016 budget and “not 2015 arrears.”
The House, in accepting the explanations, also expunged the recommendation on fuel subsidy from the report.
This also did not mean that the House had rejected fuel subsidy as a policy.
Incidentally, the Senate, which earlier passed the MTEF on Wednesday, had approved the two recommendations expunged by the House on Thursday.
The differences in the versions of the MTEF passed by each of the chambers had necessitated the appointment of a harmonisation committee to reconcile the differences.
The House immediately named a four-member committee on Thursday to meet with the Senate’s.
The development may delay the presentation of the 2016 budget estimates by Buhari on Tuesday, next week.
The Senate and the House are required to reconcile the differences latest on Monday next week or shortly before the arrival of Buhari for the joint session on the budget estimates on Tuesday.
Among others, the House passed 2.2 million barrels as the daily crude oil production for 2016 and N197 as the exchange rate to one US$.
However, it advised the Central Bank of Nigeria to “initiate measures that will close the gap between the parallel market and the official exchange rate.”
Lawmakers also retained the proposed N5.7bn as the non-oil revenue for the 2016 budget.