‘Buhari has not received 2018 budget from National Assembly’

Senator Udo Udoma

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, says President Muhammadu Buhari has yet to receive a clean copy of the 2018 Appropriation Bill as passed into law by the two chambers of the National Assembly last week.
He said there was no truth in some reports quoting him as saying that the President would not sign the document as passed by the federal lawmakers.
The minister disclosed this to State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said, “The President has yet to receive the budget. It is therefore impossible to make a statement about the budget that has not been received.
“Once we get it, we will work very quickly on it. When it is submitted, I am sure the National Assembly will inform Nigerians.”
The minister said from all indications, the nation’s economy was improving with the current Gross Domestic Product growth rate of 1.95 per cent in the first quarter of this year.
The Senate at the plenary on Wednesday approved the Conference Committee’s report on the 2018 Appropriation Bill, which corrected errors in the versions passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly.
The errors bothered on grammar and syntax.
The National Assembly passed the N9.12tn budget last week Wednesday after the Appropriation Bill had spent more than six months with the legislature.