The House of Representatives says government-owned enterprises (GOEs) have pledged to increased their revenue in the 2024 fiscal year.
The Chairman of the House committee on appropriations Hon Abubakar Bichi, made the disclosure in Abuja.
He explained the rationale behind increasing the estimates of the appropriation bill, saying revenue-generating agencies have pledged a substantial revenue increase in 2024 to support the budget.
“We had a meeting with the GOEs, we believe that their submissions are not enough. They have agreed to increase their revenue,” Bichi said.
“That is how we are able to get that 1.2 trillion which we applied to capital.”
Bichi said the budget increase in the appropriation bill is allocated to the capital component rather than recurrent expenditure.
“This is the first time the capital (component) is bigger than recurrent,” he said.
“I believe this budget is brilliant and Nigerians will see a lot of impacts.”
Town Hall Meeting
Hon Bichi said that a one-day town hall meeting was held and citizens made contributions to the money bill and that the national assembly joint committee on appropriations worked closely with the executive on the budget.
He noted that out of the N28 trillion, N1,742,786,788,150 is allocated for statutory transfers, recurrent expenditure amounts to N8,768,513,380,852, capital expenditure stands at N9,995,143,298,028 and debt service is set at N8,270,960,606,831.
The appropriations committee has been at the centre of demanding agencies to boost their revenue generation.
During budget defenc, Hon Bichi told the comptroller-general (CG) of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Mr Adewale Adeniyi, , to increase the agency’s revenue target for 2024 to N6 trillion from its proposed N5.79 trillion, stressing that the government needs money to finance several projects.
The appropriation committee chairman also urged the Nigerian Upstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) to increase its revenue target to N6 trillion from the proposed N5.6.
The legislators passed a record N28.7 trillion as the budget for 2024.
The budget was increased by N1.27 trillion.
The federal government had proposed the sum of N27.5 trillion as 2024 budget estimates.
Comments are closed.