Nigeria has decided to tinker with the 2015 budget following the dwindling fortunes of crude oil at the international market and it has proposed a review of the oil benchmark from $77.5 per barrel to $73 for the 2015 budget.Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said at a media briefing on government’s strategic response to the decline in global oil prices on Sunday in Abuja that the proposal would be sent to the National Assembly for approval.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!She added that there would be review of the entire Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).
The minister disclosed that the government was adopting the best scenario approach to address the current situation, adding that there was expectation that the price decline would continue in the nearest future.
She said government would adopt additional fiscal measures with appropriate monetary policy measures to cushion the effect of the decline on expenditure.
According to her, government expenditure will drop from N4.8 trillion (about $30bn) initially submitted to MTEF to about N4.6 trillion (about $20,8bn) this time.