Tinubu Govt Wants To Increase 2024 N27.5 Trillion Budget Over Revenue Improvement

The federal government may return to the National Assembly for a supplementary budget in 2024 if revenue surpasses projections, according to the Minister of Finance and Coordinating MInister of Economy, Wale Edun.

VerseNews reports that the minister while speaking in Abuja said President Tinubu’s N27.5 trillion appropriation bill is under consideration, with a positive trend in revenue.

Edun highlighted encouraging revenue performance, mentioning a fiscal policy committee working on reforms.

He indicated that increased revenue might lead to additional appropriations.

Efforts to speed up procurement aim to boost capital spending.

The Minister said: “The revenue performance was encouraging, it is expected to continue to be encouraging. There is fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work. It is meant to provide fundamental change together with digitalization, greater efficiency in collection because it revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.

“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will come back and am sure Mr President will authorise the process is return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue. That is a situation we are all looking forward.”

Speaking further, Edun noted that the Federal Government was looking at how to speed up the procurement process in order to increase capital spending in the 2024 budget.

He said: “When we look at actual budget performance , expenditure as at 3rd quaters of the year which is September, was 32 percent below the budget estimate, revenue was five percent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging, debt service, because of change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency and the fact we have foreign debt of about $46billion outstanding, means that debt service was up by 18 percent.

Capital expenditure performed below budget quite significantly. We are looking at issue of procurement process and ways to speed up capital spending, in term of overall balance of the budget.

Fiscal deficit is expected to come down from N13.7 trillion to N9.2 trillion and importantly, the deficit, the amount of the budget to be funded by borrowing is down from 6.1 percent to 3.9 percent that is percent of GDP and Capital expenditure remains at 32 percent, so that is the while structure of the budget.”

The budget’s fiscal deficit is expected to decrease, and tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is targeted to double in two to three years..