Senate, Reps Hold Joint Session as Buhari Presents Budget Tuesday

Senate, Reps Hold Joint Session as Buhari Presents Budget Tuesday

The Senate and House of Representatives will tomorrow Tuesday December 22 hold a joint session to receive President Muhammadu Buhari.

The president is expected to present the 2016 budget before the joint session of the federal legislature which is billed to hold in the chamber of the House of Representatives.

Recall that the president had last week written separately to both the senate president, Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara and requested to present the budget at 10am tomorrow.

Both houses of the national assembly had also last week passed the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) which predicated crude oil benchmark at $38 per barrel and 2.2 million barrels per day projected production output for next year’s budget.

The 2016 budget is estimated at N6trillion while foreign exchange rate is pegged at N197 per US dollar.

MTEF and FSP are the 3-year fiscal plan from which the annual budget is prepared and presented to the national assembly ahead of the budget as demanded by the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

As at Monday evening, security had been scaled up around the premises and perimeters of the national assembly in the three arms zone apparently in preparation for the budget presentation tomorrow.

Security is expected to be very tight Tuesday morning as entrance into the national assembly complex is likely to be restricted.