The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Thursday projected that the late passage of the 2018 Appropriation Bill into law would cost reduce the performance of the capital budget by about 13 percent and impact negatively on the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Making this forecast during the formal inauguration of the Association of Business Editors in Nigeria (ABEN) in Lagos, the Director of Research and Advocacy in the Chamber, Dr. Vincent Nwani, noted that late passage of budgets over the years had become of the greatest challenges undermining the sustainable growth of the nation’s economy.

Nwani, who represented the Director-General, LCCI, Muda Yusuf, at the forum pointed out that as the Executive-Legislature face-off over the year’s budget lingered, there was every tendency that achieving the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan targets and moving Nigeria to the top 20 economies in the world in the nearest future would be difficult..

Specifically, the economic analysts listed some of the  negative implications of late passage of yearly budgets on the nation’s economy as including, a slowdown in the economic recovery process, accentuation of the poverty level, joblessness and other multiplier effects of government’s late disbursement of funds to facilitate major economic activities in the country.

Decrying the prolonged bickering between the Executive and the Legislature over the 2018 budget, Uwani explained that it had become imperative for Nigerians to ask lawmakers whether the National Assembly is a budget making or budget influencing arm of government.

To address the unhealthy menace, he charged business journalists to “use your platform to clean up the budgetary process. Something needs to be done about the process, if not now, then in the future,” he added.

This is even as he bemoaned the country’s rising debt profile, describing the provisions for debt servicing alone which is over 50 percent in terms of its ratio to revenue as not desirable for the economy, despite claims by government of its sustainability.

Nwani also flawed the gap between the official exchange rate at N305/$ and other rates at an average of N360/$, saying that gap is becoming so wide that there is an urgent need to expose those benefiting from the differential arbitrage.

Earlier in his remarks, the Chairman of the forum and Managing Director, Daily Independent newspapers, Mr. Ade Ogidan, charged the Business Editors to continue to demonstrate their commitment in their business news and analysis gate-keeping functions.

He specifically pointed out that members of the newly inaugurated body should do more in engaging policy and decision makers on issues affecting the nation’s economic growth and sustainable development with a view to ensuring that policies and measures that are undermining the economy are not implemented.