by Lekan Olanrewaju

The various committees set up in the National Assembly are expected to conclude their work on the 2012 ‘Appropriation Bill’ this week following amendments by the Executive.

A deadline was issued by the National Assembly two weeks ago for the committees to forward their reports to the Appropriation Committees of the National Assembly.

The deadline had to be extended indefinitely after the Federal Government revised and re-presented the bill to the National Assembly.

Leader of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, said on Sunday that the delay in putting together the budget was caused by the amendment made to the bill earlier submitted by President Goodluck Jonathan.

“You know that we have been working on the reviewed details submitted after we would have passed the first version,” he said. “Hopefully, the budget will be passed next week, so that we can put that behind us.”

The revised proposal represented a N101bn slash in the N4.749tn earlier presented to the National Assembly for consideration.

Cuts in the budget included N1.319tn for capital project to N1.28tn and N2.471tn recurrent expenditure to N2.432tn. The N400.06bn allocation for education was reduced by N3.4bn. The Presidency also had its allocation cut from N43.3bn to N39.68bn, while the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation also had a cut from N70.55bn to N67bn

However the change also resulted in the original N325bn allocation for the Ministry of Defence and its agencies seeing a N6.2bn increase.