There are indications that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) will today approve the 2018 budget.
The weekly Council meeting, which was shifted from yesterday to today, åhas budget submission as the only item its agenda.


The presidency had set October as the deadline for submission of the budget to the National Assembly in a bid to return the budget cycle from January to December.

LEADERSHIP gathered that barring any last minute change, President Muhammadu Buhari would present the budget to a joint session of the National Assembly on Tuesday next week.




It was also learnt that the president will today evening host the leadership of the National Assembly to a dinner to smoothen the relationship between the executive and legislature ahead of the submission of the budget to the National Assembly.



As part of effort to beat the October deadline, President Buhari had two weeks ago presented the 2018-2020 medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) and the fiscal strategy paper (FSP) to the House of Representatives in preparation for the presentation of the 2018 budget.



Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, read a letter dated October 9, 2017, conveying the MTEF/FSP to the House.



Although the Speaker read the letter without giving details, LEADERSHIP gathered reliably that in the MTEF, the federal government projected a budget of N7.9 trillion for 2018, about N500 billion more than the 2017 N7.44 trillion appropriations.



It was also learnt that the federal government proposed $45 per barrel of oil and a 2.3 million barrel per day (mbpd) oil production quota for the 2018 budget.



The executive is said to have equally proposed an exchange rate of N305/$1, with 12.42 inflation rates, a 4.8 per cent GDP growth rate and nominal GDP of N133.97 trillion, as well as N81.60 trillion nominal consumption.



It is also expected that N2.4 trillion would be spent on capital projects implementation as against N2.17 trillion approved for 2017.



The 2016 and 2017 budgets submitted by the president to the National Assembly in December were marred by controversies.



To avoid issues of missing budget and budget padding, the executive is keen on avoiding zany form of controversy in the 2018 budget.