President buhari to present to house of Assembly the 2016 budget

President Muhammadu Buhari will next Tuesday
formally present the 2016 budget to the National
Assembly for subsequent scrutiny and approval.
It was gathered that the Senate went into an
executive session, yesterday, to give President
Buhari a soft landing to enable him present the
budget to the Senators.
The closed door session became imperative
because the Senators were to go on vacation
tomorrow and they had to come to a
compromise to allow the President present the
budget next week Tuesday.
A source told Vanguard that Senate President
Bukola Saraki had to plead with other Senators
to allow President Buhari to appear on Tuesday.
Some Senators were said to have argued that
the President should come on Friday, but the
Senior Special Assistant, National Assembly
Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, pleaded
with the principal officers before the meeting
that Friday was not feasible for the President to
appear and present the budget.
According to the source, soon after the
presentation of the 2016 Budget, the Senators
will go on vacation for the Christmas and New
Year holidays to return next year to consider the
budget.
The source said: ''We will not go on vacation on
Thursday because President Muhammadu Buhari
has pleaded that he will present the 2016
Budget to the National Assembly next Tuesday
and we have agreed and after receiving the
budget, we will proceed for the holiday.''
The Federal Government had last week proposed
a national budget of N6 trillion for 2016 fiscal
year, allocating 30 percent of the budget to the
capital expenditure.
Addressing journalists last week, Minister of
National Planning and Budget, Udoma Udo
Udoma, stated that in view of the current
economic realities, the Federal Executive Council,
FEC, predicated the budget on $38 of barrel of
crude oil as benchmark for the MTEF.
Preparatory to the presentation of the budget,
President Buhari had forwarded the Medium
Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, and Fiscal
Strategy Paper, FSP to the National Assembly
where he plans to scrap kerosene subsidy.
The document indicated that the present federal
administration is to borrow N1.835.88 trillion to
fund the 2016 budget which stands at N6.04
trillion just as it disclosed that so far, a total
sum of N350.33 billion has been recovered from
misappropriated funds.