The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved a N19.76 trillion 2023 budget proposal for presentation to the National Assembly on Friday by President Muhammadu Buhari.
This was disclosed Wednesday by the Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina who briefed newsmen after the weekly virtual Council meeting chaired by the President.
Adesina said the draft document, prepared by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, was presented to Buhari at the meeting during which it was “extensively discussed” by the cabinet.
Adesina, who declined to give details of the budget proposals discussed at the “one-item meeting”, explained that it would not be proper to give out the details now before the presentation of the document to the National Assembly members.
He said: “It was virtually one item for the Executive Council meeting in which the budget proposals for 2023 were presented and discussed, at length.
“That budget proposal will be taken to the National Assembly on Friday morning by Mr. President. So, it would not be proper to begin to discuss the contents of what will be officially presented on Friday.
“So, that is the information I have for us; that we won’t have the traditional briefing of what happened at the Council because it’s about a budget that will be presented on Friday morning. We’ll want to give the National Assembly the honour of receiving it first.”
Asked if the budget was endorsed by the council, he said: “What was done was that it was discussed extensively and there were inputs, whichever input needs to be reflected before Friday will be done and then it will be presented to the National Assembly.
“Let me tell you, you’ll have the Revised 2023/2025 Fiscal Framework. You will have an Expenditure Profile. You’ll have a Budget Proposal, you’ll have Aggregate Expenditure, Overhead Costs, Personnel Cost, Capital Expenditure, and so on.
“So, all those things have been discussed and where they needed to tweak some of the projections that has been done. The final approved copy will be presented by the President on Friday,” he added.
