The federal government has said it might consider returning to the National Assembly to seek the federal lawmaker’s approval for a supplementary budget next year if the government surpasses its revenue projections.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s N27.5 trillion 2024 national budget was currently being considered by the federal parliament.
Speaking before the joint sitting of National Assembly Committee on Finance Monday, Minister of Finace, Mr Wale Edun, told the lawmakers that there had been a tremendous improvement in the nation’s revenue profile in recent months.
He said if the revenue continues to increase; the federal government would have to return to the National Assembly to seek further appropriation for the additional revenue.
The minister said: “The revenue performance was encouraging , here we see that the revenue profile is encouraging.
“It is expected that it would continue to be encouraging, there is fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work.
“It is meant to provide fundamental changes together with digitalisation and greater efficiency in collection because it is revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.
“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will be coming back , and am sure Mr. President will authorise the process to return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue that is a situation we are all looking forward.”
Edun said the federal government was already looking at how to speed up the procurement process in order to increase capital spending in the 2024 budget.
He said, “When we look at the actual budget performance, expenditure as of the third quarter of the year which is September was 32 per cent below the budget estimate.
“Revenue was five per cent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging because of change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency and the fact we have foreign debt of about $46bn outstanding.”
