President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, signed into law, the 2021 Appropriation Bill. The brief signing ceremony was done inside the President’s office at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
On Monday, the National Assembly passed ₦13.58trn budget for the next fiscal year.
The Buhari led administration had desired to restore the budget of the country to January to December cycle.
All Progressive Congress-led government achieved this with the 2020 budget as Buhari signed the document into law on December 17, 2019.
Thus, the Thursday signing sustained the desire.
The 2021 Appropriation Bill which was passed by the National Assembly on Monday, raised the total estimation from the proposed ₦13.08trn to over ₦500bn increase.
On October 8, 2020, the President presented the budget before a joint session of the National Assembly.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives Committees on Appropriations had laid a harmonised report in the respective chambers as the National Assembly held special sessions mainly to pass the national budget ahead of the Christmas and New Year break.
Out of the total sum of N13.59tn for 2021, N496.53bn is for statutory transfers; N3.32tn is for debt service; N5.64tn is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure; while the sum of N4.13trn is for capital expenditure.
While statutory transfers totaling N496.53bn were approved, it was observed that the N125bn proposed for the National Assembly and its affiliates had been raised by N8.99bn, putting the new total estimates at N133.99bn.
