President Muhammadu Buhari has presented the N13.08trillion budget estimates for the 2021 fiscal year to the joint session of the National Assembly for consideration and approval.

The National Assembly gets N128 billion in the 2021 budget in the plan, while N380.21b was proposed for the health ministry. N3.8 trillion has been allocated to all ministries departments and agencies for the execution of capital projects.

According to DailyTrust, the budget proposal is predicated on N379 per dollar exchange rate; oil benchmark of $40 barrel per day; and oil production volume of 1.86 million per day.

Inflation growth rate was projected at 11.95 percent; while Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate was fixed at 3 percent.

DailyTrust further reports that the total capital expenditure projected in the budget is N3.58 trillion, representing 29% of the aggregate expenditure. This is an improvement over the 24 percent projected in budget 2020.

The budget breakdown shows that N5.66 trillion is for recurrent (Non-Debt) expenditure; N3.05 trillion for Personnel Costs; N350 billion for Special Intervention (Recurrent); and N20 billion for Special Intervention (Capital).

Sectoral Allocations

• Ministry of Power: N198 billion
• Works and Housing N440 billion
• Ministry of Defence N121 billion
• Ministry of Defence N110 billion
• Ministry of Water Resources N146 billion
• Ministry of Education N127 billion
• UBEC N70 billion
  Ministry of Health N132 billion
• Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP) N100 billion
  Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) N64 billion.

President Buhari urged federal legislators to pay as much attention to the government’s revenue generation, which he said had remained the major challenge of his administration.

He said the budget was prepared amid the global economic downturn occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic.

The President, however, said he had directed ministers to monitor strictly revenue generation by the government agencies.