Senate resumes today, to discuss 2014 budget

 

The Senate will reconvene on Tuesday (today) after seven weeks of holiday with expectations that the executive will send to it, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework which will form the basis for their deliberations on the 2014 budget.

The MTEF, which is expected to cover the period of 2014 – 2016 fiscal years, usually helps the nation in its revenue generation efforts.

The essential features of MTEF are production quota, oil benchmark and revenue projection.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Ita Enang, stated this while briefing journalists, in Abuja on Monday.

Enang, who said the National Assembly was still awaiting the framework, explained that there could be no budget presentation until MTEF was received from the executive and accordingly deliberated upon.

After receiving the MTEF, he said, the lawmakers would deliberate on the content with the intention to draw conclusion on which of the components of the framework would serve as benchmark for the budget.

After fruitful deliberation, the added, the framework would be passed and sent back to the executive, thus clearing the coast for budget presentation.

He said, “In fact, MTEF after being deliberated upon by the National Assembly and forwarded back to the Presidency, usually serves as a basis upon which the budget profile of a particular year is predicated by the executive.”

There were, however fears in some quarters that since the MTEF was yet to arrive at National Assembly,  it could dash the hopes of a repeat of last year’s feat when budget was presented on October 9.