SAN FRANCISCO, April 10, (THEWILL) – The House of Representatives Thursday adopted the Senate’s version of the 2014 Appropriation Bill as it approved N4.695 trillion for the fiscal year.
The House had on Wednesday held an executive session where it resolved to pass the budget on Thursday. At Thurday’s sitting, the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Hon. John Enoh, after moving a motion for consideration of the bill, the House dissolved into a Committee of Supply where the budget was expeditiously passed.
A point of order by Hon. Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers) to impress on the House to postpone consideration of the budget pending the receipt of the details as earlier demanded was however ruled out of order by Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal.
Spokesman for the House, Hon. Zakari Mohammed, while reacting to the passage of the budget, said the House decided to go ahead with the passage of the budget because it would be insensitive to delay it after the upper chamber had approved the bill on Wednesday.
Details of the budget passed by the House indicate that the sum of N408,687,801,891 was allocated for statutory transfers; N712 billion is for debt service; N2,454,887,566,702 is for recurrent while N1,119,614,407 is for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure.
The recurrent expenditure shows that education got the highest allocation of N373,532,095; Defence/MOD/Army/Air Force/Navy got N314,347,339,871; Police formation/Commands got N295,561,812,085; Health got N214,946,652,273; Interior got N145,021,228,363; Youth Development got N75,957,608,331; office of the National Security Adviser got N66,625,072,907 while Petroleum Resources got N55,706,174,457.
The debt service and statutory components of the budget showed that the sum of N663.61 billion is for domestic debts; N48.39 billion is for foreign debts; N150 billion is for National Assembly; N73 billion is for National Judicial Council; N70.47 billion is for Universal Basic Education (UBE); N49.030 billion is for Niger Delta Development Commission and additional sum of N12.910 billion for arrears of fourth quarter; N45 billion is for Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); N6.927 billion is for Public Complaints Commission while N1.35 billion is for National Human Right Commission.
N30 billion was allocated for general election logistics support; N24 billion for contingency; N30,582,553,824 for payment of outstanding death benefit to civil servants (five percent of total personnel cost); and N11 billion for Group Life Insurance for all MDAs.
Similarly, under the capital expenditure components, Works top the list with N106,321,293,055; Power got N59,814,290,389; office of NSA got N51.1 billion; Education got N50,781,035,231; Health got N49,535,699,601; Niger Delta got N49,403,704,194; Water Resources got N44,206,343,742; Agriculture and Rural Development got N35,551,172,583; Transport got N31,808,108,913 while Defence/MOD/Army/Air Force/Navy got N35.36 billion.
Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) got N268.37 billion; N1 billion for 2011 election violence and civil disturbances (damages done to properties and places of worship).
SAINT MUGAGA, ABUJA.
