2019 Budget: FEC Meeting To Hold Special Sitting On Friday

FEC Meeting To Hold On Friday

Another Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting was today scheduled for Friday to deliberate on the 2019 budget proposal.

Mr. Femi Adesina stated that Friday’s special FEC meeting would endorse and approve the 2019 draft budget for onward submission to the National Assembly for its approval.

FEC meeting today was presided by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He was with the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and the Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung.

According to him, the meeting was necessary to quickly look at the proposal before forwarding it to the National Assembly for consideration.

Naija News reports that this will be the third time in a row that President Muhammadu Buhari will be absent at the weekly FEC meeting.

The President is currently away in Poland for climate change seminar and he is expected back in the country later on Wednesday.

On Oct. 18, Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udoma, at the consultative forum on the medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) and fiscal strategy paper (FSP) 2019 to 2021, said the Federal Government plans to submit a leaner 2019 budget to the National Assembly before the end of November.

In spite of the recent oil output drop to about 1.9 million barrels a day, Udoma said government was optimistic the 2.3 million barrels a day target was achievable with production now rising to about 2.15 million barrels a day and new oil productions being put into play.

Although a $50 per barrel oil price benchmark was proposed in the ERGP, he said with a significant rise in the price above $80 per barrel currently, government has proposed a $60 a barrel oil price for the budget.

He said N305 was proposed as exchange rate to the dollar, with government working to keep inflation down after slight increases in the last two months on the heels of 18 months consecutive decline.

The projected target gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate for the budget was put at 3.01 per cent, reduced from 4.5 per cent in the ERGP; 3.6 per cent in 2020 and 3.9 per cent in 2021.

“Growth is expected to increase from 0.8 per cent in 2017 to 2.1 per cent this year and 3.01 per cent in 2019 with the continued implementation of the ERGP in 2019 and improved outlook for oil prices,” he said.

On revenue, Udoma said based on the oil price and oil production assumptions, government expects to generate about N3.6 trillion from oil, up by about N500 billion from last year’s figure.

About N6.9 trillion revenue is projected to be available to the budget in 2019.

With other projections showing government expects to collect less revenue from some independent sources, he said only about N624 billion is expected to be realised, against about N847 billion in the 2018 budget, among others.