The Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning has presented a draft Medium Term Expenditure Framework 2023-2025forthe country to the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, said this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the weekly FEC meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
She said the draft document contains an assumption crude oil price of $70 per barrel for 2023, $66 for 2024 and $62 for 2025, with an estimated production rate of 1.69 million barrels per day for 2023 and 1.813 million barrels per day for 2024 and 2025.
“The assumptions that we made for the next medium term framework from 2023 to 2025 is that crude oil price will be at $70 per barrel for 2023, $66 per barrel for 2024 and $62 per barrel for 2025. Crude oil production is projected to be 1.69million bpd for 2023 and 1.813million bpd for both 2024 as well as 2025.
“We have also projected that the nominal GDP, that the size of Nigeria economy will rise up to N225.5trillion with 95% of this contribution by the non-oil sector while the oil sector will be contribution only 5%.
“And some steady increase from 2024 2025 to reach up to N280.70trillion in 2025. This means that Nigeria continues to retain its position as the largest economy in Africa,” she said.
She said the ministry got inputs from the Federal Executive Council and would make the necessary adjustments for onward presentation to the National Assembly.
The Finance Minister also gave clarifications on what has been happening to the country’s Excess Crude Account.
“On the issue of the excess cause account, in the past four years, because of volatility in the cause oil market, we have not had accrual to the excess crude account.
“So, what we have had has been gradually used up for different purposes and it is always used in consultation with the National Economic Council that is the Governors because this is a federation account.
“The last approval that was given by the council was the withdrawal of $1billion to enhance security. We have been utilizing that and the last trench of that has been finally released because deployment to security agencies are based on the contracts that are executed and it’s been used strictly for that security purpose. So, the utilization of the account is with the full knowledge of the Governors,” she said.
She said the 2022 budget has performed very well with a steady growth in the economy for five consecutive quarters.
