President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday sent the Medium Term Expenditure Frame- work (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) to the National Assembly with N500 billion voted to pay unemployed Nigerian graduates and feed school children amongst other social welfare programmes in the N6.07 trillion budget for 2016.

Buhari said “phased” social welfare programmes will be created to cater for a large population of the poorest and most vulnerable Nigerians upon the evidence of children’s enrolment in school and evidence of immunization.

In other 2016 votes, N63.29 billion was voted for subsidy (including N150 billion for 2015 arrears); N20 billion for the Presidential Amnesty Programme in 2016, down from N47.39 billion voted in 2015, and N39.88 billion voted for Frontier Exploration Services – to prospect for oil in the Chad Basin.

The National Assembly budget was slashed from N120 billion in 2015 to N115 billion in 2016.

In new borrowings, the federal government proposed N1.2 trillion (domestic) and N635 billion (foreign) borrowing, totalling N1.835.88 trillion in 2016.

According to the MTEF/FSP, the federal government recovered N350.33 billion in misappropriated funds which will be injected into the 2016 budget.

The recoveries include N137.90 billion (refunds/recoveries from Strategic Alliance Contracts); N162.43 billion (NNPC/CBN) and other recoveries which amount to N50 billion.

The MTEF/FSP is the precursor to the budget itself, as provided in the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA).

Credit: Leadership