The Senate on Wednesday approved the 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) presented by President Bola Tinubu to it for consideration.
The approval of the fiscal documents followed the adoption of the report of its Joint Committee on Finance, Appropriation, National Planning, Local and Foreign Debts at plenary.
During the presentation of the committee’s report, the chairman, Sen. Sani Musa, said that the committee had critically appraised the fiscal proposals and considered them reasonable in the current efforts to boost the country’s revenue generation capacity and fiscal system efficiency.
According to him, one of the key recommendations of the committee is that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), should work toward reducing its operational costs and reduce wastages.
This MTEF/FSP 2024-2026, which was created by the Budget Office of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development on October 19 2023, provides details of the historical performance of Budget forecasts for the macroeconomic aggregates of real and nominal GDP, as well as for estimates of government revenues & expenditure.
The Fiscal Strategy Paper also presents a number of economic forecasts / projections and key underlying assumptions as well as Government’s medium-term outlook.
In the public finance system, the MTEF&FSP operationalises high-level fiscal objectives in concrete terms and in a manner that demonstrates credibility and political will and a transparent and publicly available MTEF&FSP document helps in promoting accountability.
According to the Budget Office, the MTEF&FSP is the “cornerstone of the budget formulation process, which brings together the various commitments and constraints in one place to enable decision-makers to consider how to meet constraints such as fiscal rules.”
