President Bola Tinubu on Monday signed the 2024 Appropriation Bill into law in keeping with his commitment to maintaining a timeous, predictable, and efficient budget cycle for the country.
The top priorities of the 2024 budget of N28.7 trillion include defence and internal security, job creation, macro-economic stability, improved investment environment, human capital development, poverty reduction, and social security.
Speaking during the signing of the bill at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, the President assured Nigerians that the implementation of the budget would be efficiently pursued and vigorously monitored to ensure the achievements of the objectives.
He assured: “All the institutional mechanisms shall be held to account in ensuring diligent implementation. All MDA’s have been directed to take responsibility and provide monthly Budget Performance Reports to the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, which in turn shall ensure the veracity of such.
“The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy shall hold regular reviews with the Economic Management Team and, in addition, I shall Chair periodic Economic Coordination Council meetings”, Tinubu added.
The President stressed his commitment to enhance investment promotion by creating a rules-based society that favours no individual over the law with important reforms in the Nigerian judiciary, the funding for which is captured in the 2024 Appropriation Act.
He maintained: “Funding the judiciary is a major element in our effort to support a just, rules-based society. Statutory transfer to the Judiciary has been increased from 165 billion naira to 342 billion naira.”
Some of the key estimates of the 2024 budget are capital expenditure, N10 trillion; recurrent expenditure, N8.8 trillion; debt service, N8.2 trillion, and statutory transfers, N1.7 trillion.
Earlier in his nationwide New Year address to Nigerians, Tinubu undertook a cursory assessment of the policy measures introduced by his administration and the associated hardships on the citizenry, promising that steps will be taken this year to alleviate the citizens’ sufferings, improve the business environment to attract investments and by so doing, boost the performance of the economy.
He pointed out that his administration recognised that no meaningful economic transformation can happen without steady electricity supply, adding that in 2024, the government will be moving a step further in its quest to restart local refining of petroleum products with Port Harcourt Refinery, and the Dangote Refinery, which shall fully come on stream.
According to him, to ensure constant food supply, security and affordability, the administration will step up our plan to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmlands across the country to grow maize, rice, wheat, millet and other staple crops.
He said: “In this new year, we will race against time to ensure all the fiscal and tax policy reforms we need to put in place are codified and simplified to ensure the business environment does not destroy value. On every foreign trip I have embarked on, my message to investors and other business people has been the same. Nigeria is ready and open for business.
“I will fight every obstacle that impedes business competitiveness in Nigeria and I will not hesitate to remove any clog hindering our path to making Nigeria a destination of choice for local and foreign investments.
“In my 2024 Budget presentation to the National Assembly, I listed my administration’s 8 priority areas including national defence and internal security, job creation, macro-economic stability, investment environment optimization, human capital development, poverty reduction and social security. Because we take our development agenda very seriously, our 2024 budget reflects the premium we placed on achieving our governance objectives.
“We will work diligently to make sure every Nigerian feels the impact of their government. The economic aspirations and the material well-being of the poor, the most vulnerable and the working people shall not be neglected. It is in this spirit that we are going to implement a new national living wage for our industrious workers this new year. It is not only good economics to do this, it is also a morally and politically correct thing to do”, Tinubu assured.
