On Thursday the 2022 budget has been laid by President Muhammadu Buhari before the joint session of the National Assembly with a N6.2 trillion deficit to be funded by borrowing.
President Buhari, while laying the budget, defended the borrowing by his government. He stated that Nigeria would have still been in recession if not for borrowing by his government.
“As you are aware, we have witnessed two economic recessions within the period of this administration. In both cases, we had to spend our way out of recession, which necessitated a resort to growing the public debt. It is unlikely that our recovery from each of the two recessions would have grown as fast without the sustained government expenditure funded by debt,” he said.
According to the president, Nigeria is not having a debt problem, rather, a revenue problem.
To finance the deficit, Nigeria will borrow “N5.01 trillion, N90.73 billion from privatization proceeds and N1.16 trillion drawdowns on loans secured for specific development projects.”
The total budget presented by Buhari is N16.39 trillion.
The breakdown is as follows; statutory transfers N768.28 billion, recurrent costs of N6.83 trillion, overhead N792.39 billion.
Capital expenditure of N5.35 trillion, debt service N3.61 trillion, sinking fund 292.71 billion.
In his remarks, the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan said the National Assembly will pass the budget before the end of the year.
