The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, has said that the N27.5 trillion proposed as 2024 budget estimates now before the National Assembly is too small to meet Nigeria’s needs
According to him, the fiscal proposals are just to make the government to ties its expenditures to accruable earnings in the year.
Akabueze, who made this remark when he featured on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday, said: “I’m always first to acknowledge that the budget of the Federal Government of Nigeria is way too small relative to our needs and our requirements but it is now a case of cutting our coat according to our cloth rather than our size.
“The reason this budget is this small is because our public revenues are also too small. We also need to keep the focus on that”, he added.
While making elaborate clarifications on the economic projections of the President Bola Tinubu government for 2024, the public finance expert maintained that despite the criticisms against the 2024 budget estimates, the Appropriation Bill 2024 still focused on the poor in terms of healthcare, security, education and the economy.
It would be recalled that the President on November 29 laid the proposed budget estimates of N27.5 trillion before the lawmakers at a joint session of the National Assembly for approval.
Giving a breakdown of the budget estimates, the President proposed recurrent non-debit expenditure at N9.92 trillion, capital expenditure at N8.73 trillion, debt service at N8.25 trillion, revenue at N18.32 trillion, new borrowings at N7.83 trillion and a projected deficit of N9.18 trillion.
He projected that the economy would grow by 3.76%, while “inflation is expected to moderate to 21.4% in the fiscal year.
