President Buhari To Present The 2016 Appropriation Bill Today

President Muhammadu Buhari will today present the 2016 Appropriation Bill to the joint session of the National Assembly comprising the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Ahead of today's budget presentation, the Senate had last week approved the Medium Term and Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) submitted by the Federal Government, approving Crude Oil Benchmark price of $38 per barrel for 2016 despite the global dwindling crude oil price to $36 per barrel as at Monday.

In the documents, the Senate also approved that the Federal Government should in 2016 establish a database and possibly a single salary account for all its employees as that would help streamline and reduce its personnel cost. It also approved the exchange rate of N197 to $1 as proposed in the MTEF. Naira currently exchanges at N270 to a dollar on the parallel market.

Meanwhile, senators and members of the House of Representatives are prepared to give the bill accelerated consideration and passage into law, according to Vanguard.

As part of moves to fast track the passage of the bill when the Senators resume from New year break in the second week of January, a source told the newspaper that once the President presents the budget today, the Senate and the House of Representatives will go to their various chambers to commence work.

According to the source, part of the arrangement is to present the bill for first reading today and tomorrow, when the lawmakers will formally adjourn sitting till next year, the bill would then be presented for second reading and passed and thereafter referred to the appropriate committees on Finance, Budget, National Planning and Appropriation among others.

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