The Senate has started debate on the general principles of budget 2017 presented to a joint session of the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari on December 14, last year.
Senate Leader, Senator Ahmed Lawan, flagged off the debate of a Bill for an Act to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the total sum of N7, 298,507,709,937 only, of which N419,020,648,000 only, is for statutory transfers.
N1,663,885,430,499 only, is for Debt Service, N177,460,296,707 only, is for sinking fund for maturing bonds, N2,979,151,756,196 only, is for recurrent (Non-Debt) expenditure while the sum of N2,058,,989,578,536 only, is for contribution to the Development fund for capital expenditure.
Lawan noted that with the 2017 budget of recovery and growth, the future of the country looks bright as the year to year growth in capital expenditure demonstrated the government’s desire to make the country more competitive in order to bring the economy out of recession and into steady growth and prosperity.
