FEC discusses Nigeria’s 2014-2016 budgets at emergency meeting The Executive Council of the Federation, FEC, at its emergency meeting of Friday began discussions on the 2014 budget. The meeting presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan discussed the medium term fiscal framework for 2014-2016 and how to avoid the bottlenecks that marred the passage and implementation of the 2013 budget. Details of the meeting were disclosed by the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who briefed journalists after the meeting that lasted for about three hours. The FEC holds its weekly meeting on Wednesdays while the Friday emergency meeting was only summoned by Mr. Jonathan on Thursday as reported by PREMIUM TIMES. Mr. Maku said the meeting was called “because of the urgency to ensure that we deal with all the issues and get it over with.” “What we have done today is something that could hardly be done on a normal council day,” he added. He said the meeting was called to extensively discuss the budget forecast for 2014 to 2016 and “also to look critically into the revenue we expect, the expenditure for these years, the overall fiscal objectives of the government to grow the economy between this period”. “It is an elaborate policy paper that was brought to us, we have been debating it to see that the budget between now and 2016 we realise the objective of further growing the GDP, stabilizing the economic environment which has ensured that Nigeria remains the fastest growing economy in the region as well as the destination of the influx of foreign investment. “What we want is to ensure that the budget for the next two years will consolidate what the President has achieved in the first two years by growing the GDP, stabilizing the economy, creating a conducive atmosphere to grow businesses while attending to the nation’s most important and basic infrastructural needs to ensure that we keep our eyes on the ball and to ensure that what we do in the next two to three years will further consolidate on the transformation agenda of the President,” he said. Mr. Maku said the framework was still “a work in progress” and that the details of the document, including the figures, were still being debated and will not be made public until work is concluded. He said attendees made some observations that the Finance Minister will fine-tune and return to FEC for approval ahead of the presentation to the National Assembly. He expressed hope that the budget will be ready possibly as early as October so that the National Assembly members can commence work on it. “The early passage of the budget will also improve execution. Last year it was October, so, this year we are hoping to keep the momentum of early passage of the budget. At least submission to the NASS should be early so that by January we should have the budget passed” he added. The controversial 2013 budget was also presented to federal lawmakers in October and passed by the lawmakers in December. President Jonathan, however, withheld his accent until early 2013 and only signed after lawmakers agreed to consider a supplementary budget to resolve contentious issues. The supplementary budget was passed by the National Assembly just before they commenced their recess in July
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 11:40:15 +0000
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