By Nse Anthony-Uko
(Sundiata Post) – Last week the National Assembly passed the 2018 Budget after increasing the expenditure estimates from N8.612 trillion to N9.12 trillion. This indicated additional N508 billion for spending during the year.
Here are the sectors that will benefit from the increase in the 2018 budget.
According to Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Danjuma Goje, the critical sectors responsible for the increase to include: “Reduction of deficit N50.88 billion; Security N46.72billion; Health N57.15billion; Power, Works and Housing N106.50 billion; Education (particularly for the infrastructure for the 12 newly established Universities and meal subsidy in Unity schools) N15.70 billion; Judiciary N10.00billion and Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) N44.20billion, which is a part payment of the NDDC liabilities on the Federal Government of Nigeria.”
According to him, this was attributed to the increase in oil price benchmark, which was increased from the proposed $45 per barrel to $51 per barrel.
Allocations In the past budget, projects such as Power, Works and Housing as well as Transportation got the highest capital allocation out of total sum of N2.873 trillion in the 2018 budget.
The breakdown shows that Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing got the highest allocation of N682.309 billion, followed by Transportation which received N251.420 billion; N157.715 billion for Defence; N149.198 billion for Agriculture and Rural Development; N147.200 billion for Water Resources and N102.907 billion for Education while N150 billion was allotted to capital Special Intervention programme.
Breakdown of the 2018 budget also showed that National Assembly got N139.5 billion as against N125 billion in 2017; National Judicial Council (NJC) gets N110 billion as against the sum of N100 billion approved by President Muhammadu