President Muhammadu Buhari will present the 2016 Appropriation Bill to the joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives today and there are strong indications that the lawmakers are ready to ensure speedy passage of the bill.
In other words, Senators and members of the House of Representatives are prepared to give the bill accelerated consideration and passage into law.
As part of moves to fast track the passage of the bill when the Senators resume from New Year break in the second week of January, a source said once the President presents the budget Tuesday, the Senate and the House of Representatives will go to their various chambers to commence work.
Part of the arrangement is to present the bill for first reading today and tomorrow, then the lawmakers will formally adjourn sitting till next year when the bill would be presented for second reading and passed and thereafter referred to the appropriate committees on Finance, Budget, National Planning and Appropriation among others.
The move would make the job easy as the budget would then be at the committee level where ministers, heads of parastatals, departments and agencies of government would be invited to defend their budgets.
Last Wednesday, the Senate approved the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) submitted by the Federal Government, just as it approved Crude Oil Benchmark price of $38 per barrel for 2016 despite the global dwindling crude oil price to $36 per barrel as at Monday from $40 per barrel.
In the documents, the Senate also approved that the Federal Government should in 2016 establish a data base and possibly a single salary account for all its employees as that would help streamline and reduce its personnel cost. It also approved the exchange rate of N197 to $1 as proposed in the MTEF.
-Vanguard