The House of Representatives on Tuesday received the report of 2017 N7.30tn Appropriation Bill from its Committee on Appropriation for final consideration.
The report indicated that the committee increased the budget to N7.44tn, representing an addition of about N143bn to the one presented by President Muhammadu Buhari on Dec. 14, 2016.
After the receipt of the bill, the House referred it to the Appropriation Committee on Jan. 26, 2017, but its processing suffered delay due to the inability of other committees to tidy their reports in time.
Presenting the report at plenary, Chairman of the committee, Rep. Mustapha Dawaki, said that the committee worked with other committees in the House to arrive at the new figure for the budget.
According to the report, N434.4bn is for statutory transfer, N1.84tn for debt servicing and N177.46bn is for sinking Fund for maturing bonds.
The committee appropriated N2.99tn for recurrent (Non-Debt) expenditure, while N2.17tn was provided for contribution to the development fund for Capital Expenditure.