President Muhammadu Buhari has sought the approval of the National Assembly for a N819.54 billion supplementary budget.
This development came as Nigeria’s domestic debt rose to N22.57 trillion.
However, Buhari, in a new development, noted to the National Assembly that the new proposed loan will be meant for a supplementary budget for the 2022 fiscal year to fix various infrastructure destroyed by floods across the various states in the country a few months ago.
The supplementary budget as explained by the President in a letter read in plenary by the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, is meant for the capital expenditure component of the 2022 budget with an attendant increase of deficit to N8.17 trillion.
The letter read, “The year 2022 has witnessed the worse flood incident in recent history which has caused massive destruction of farmlands at a point already closed to harvest season.
“This may compound the situation of food security and nutrition in the country. The flood has also devastated road infrastructure across the 36 states and the FCT (Federal Capital Territory) as well as bridges nationwide that are critical for the movement of goods and services.
“The water sector was equally affected by the flood and there is a need to complete some ongoing critical projects that have already achieved about 85 percentage completion. The nine critical projects proposed in the sector cut across water supply, dam projects, and irrigation projects nationwide.
“I have approved a supplementary budget of 2022 appropriation of N819.536bn, all of which are capital expenditures. The supplementary will be financed through additional domestic borrowings which will raise the budget deficit for 2022 to N8.17tn and deficit to GDP ratio to 4.43 per cent.”
Being a proposal coming 10 to the New Year, the President of the Senate hurriedly forwarded it to the Senate Committees on Appropriation, Finance, Works, Water Resources, and Agriculture for expeditious consideration.
The Federal Government’s initial plan was to borrow N5.01 trillion (with domestic debt put at N2.51 trillion) to finance part of the N6.26 trillion budget deficit.
With the newly proposed N819.54 billion domestic debt, the Federal Government’s domestic borrowing is expected to hit N3.33 trillion for 2022.
