President Goodluck Jonathan has written to both chambers of the National Assembly indicating his decision to postpone the budget presentation earlier scheduled to take place today (Tuesday).
In a letter addressed to the National Assembly and read by the Senate President David Mark, the president said “there is a need for both chambers to harmonise the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Financial Strategy Paper (FSP) before the presentation”.
The letter further said “in the circumstance, it has become necessary to defer the presentation of the 2014 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly until such a time when both respected chambers would have harmonised their positions on the MTEF” hoping that “it will be in the shortest possible time”.
After the announcement, the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila told Channels Television in a live broadcast of the 12 noon version of the hourly News Track, that the president “gave a very cogent reason why the budget could not be presented. Under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, as you will be aware, the budget is predicated upon the MTEF and the MTEF has not been passed” noting that the Senate passed a version of it with a benchmark at $76.50 and the House has passed $79 per barrel benchmark”.
He also applauded the president for not sending a proxy to present the budget, as was rumoured, and noted that “it will have been unacceptable to some of us, based on tradition, law and the constitution”.
He noted that the deferment has “put us back in reverse” insisting that “it is rather unfortunate”.
He further added that the Fiscal Responsibility Act envisages a situation where the MTEF is actually submitted to the National Assembly months ahead of the passage of the budget, not a week or two before the budget, so it will give us time to thoroughly and vigorously debate the issues that may be contained therein”.
“Definitely, they will have to, at some point, if it comes to that, go back to the drawing board and re-arrange or re-draft their budget in conformity with what the benchmark is, because it throws it up quite a bit” he said.
Despite the setback, the House Minority Leader maintained that “we cannot sacrifice a proper budget at the altar of timeousness” stressing that “it is unfortunate but the National Assembly will speed up its harmonisation process; we can harmonise in a couple of days if we want to and agree or disagree”.
Last week’s session was shifted because the Medium Term Expenditure Framework , the government’s financial outlay for the next three years, was not adopted by the Senate and the House of Representatives.
