The Federal Executive Council on Friday held an Extra-Ordinary Cabinet meeting to deliberate on the medium-term fiscal strategy framework for 2014-2016.
According to the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who briefed State House correspondents after the meeting that lasted for about three house, the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, made a presentation to the Council.
In a bid to ensure early presentation of the 2014 budget to the National Assembly, President Goodluck Jonathan had to convene the special Cabinet meeting to discuss the framework.
Maku said there was the need to look critically at the revenues expectations so as to come up with a budget that can further grow the economy within the three-year period, stabilise the macro-economic environment and scale up the country’s Gross Domestic Product and ultimately consolidate on the administration’s Transformation Agenda.
According to Maku, the framework is “a work in progress”, adding that details would only be made public after thorough debate.
He said the presentation also gave Ministers ample opportunity to make observations so that the Finance Minister could
fine-tune the proposal before returning to FEC for final approval and onward transmission to the National Assembly.
Maku said: “The meeting was called to discuss the medium term fiscal framework and the fiscal strategy paper for the 2014/2016 appropriation year.
“We have been discussing the medium term fiscal strategy paper forwarded to us by the CME.
“We discussed the planned strategy for the budget between 2014 and 2015.
“The medium term fiscal strategy and the fiscal policy strategy paper are contained in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 fiscal revenue framework as well as the expenditure framework for the budget of this year.
“The idea of bringing this to FEC was for us to intensively discuss the budget scorecard for the year between 2014 and 2016 and also to look critically at the revenue we expect and the expenditure for this year and the overall fiscal objective of the government to grow the economy within this period.
“It’s an elaborate policy paper that was brought to us.
“We have been debating it to see that the budget between now and 2016 realises the objective of growing the GDP, stabilising the macro economic environment, which has ensured that Nigeria remains the fastest growing economy in the continent as well as the destination for the inflow of foreign investment into the continent.
“So we are looking at the budget objective, budget policy and the direction that we want the economy to go and how it could impact on the welfare and well being of the people of Nigeria.
“It’s a technical paper.
“e have begun discussion on it.
“t is work in progress.
“We have made the first observation, which the CME will be going back to work on further, before it is openly tabled at the National Assembly.
“This is what we have been doing since morning.
“What we want is to ensure that the budget for the next two years will consolidate what the President has achieved in the first two years by growing the GDP, stabilising the economy, creating a conducive atmosphere to grow businesses while attending to the nation’s most important and basic infrastructural needs to ensure that we keep our eyes on the ball and to ensure that what we do in the next two to three years will further consolidate on the transformation agenda of the President.
“A lot of successes have already been achieved in the economy and we want to be so consistently in terms of policy direction, in terms of target and objectives we intend to achieve in various sectors of the Nigerian economy.
“We also looked at the global environment to ensure that whatever we come up with will take into account the global realities as well as our local needs.
“We will not be able to give details until the final picture emerges.
“We also want to ensure that this year’s budget, like last year’s, comes early.
“The early passage of the budget will also improve execution.
“Last year, it was October.
“So, this year we are hoping to keep the momentum of early passage of the budget.”
Maku, therefore, expressed optimism that the budget will be ready latest by October.
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