In a letter to the Senate, President Muhammadu Buhari requested approval of a N819.5 billion additional budget for the 2022 fiscal year in order to repair critical infrastructure that was damaged by flood in the various states of the nation.
The President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan, read the letter of President Buhari’s supplementary budget proposal yesterday as it was stated that the money is intended for the capital expenditure portion of the 2022 budget, resulting in an increase of the deficit to N8.17 trillion.
The Senate President hastily sent the topic to the Senate Committees on Appropriations, Finance, Works, Water Resources, and Agriculture for prompt consideration due to the urgency of the situation.
The plan is for a year that has ten days left, but Lawan stated that the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, as well as the Ministers of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Water Resources, and Agriculture, must appear before Senate Committees today in order to provide them with information about the Supplementary Budget.
The planned N819.5 billion extra budget, the president continued, will be paid for by further domestic borrowings.
The letter read: ”The year 2022 has witnessed the worse flood incident in recent history which has caused massive destruction of farmlands at a point already closed to harvest season.
“This may compound the situation of food security and nutrition in the country. The flood has also devastated road infrastructure across the 36 states and the FCT as well as bridges nationwide that are critical for the movement of goods and services.
“The water sector was equally affected by the flood and there is a need to complete some ongoing critical projects that have already achieved about 85 per cent completion.
“The nine critical projects proposed in the sector cut across water supply, dam projects and irrigation projects nationwide.
“I have approved a supplementary budget of 2022 appropriation of N819.536 Billion, all of which are capital expenditures.
“The supplementary will be financed through additional domestic borrowings which will raise the budget deficit for 2022 to N8.17 trillion and deficit to GDP ratio to 4.43%.”