Sen. Ahmed LawanSenate President, Ahmed Lawan has expressed optimism that the early passage of the 2020 national budget will bring about many positive indicators to the nation’s economy.
Answering reporters’ questions today, December 17 shortly after the presidential assent to the budget at the presidential Villa, Abuja, Senator Lawan said: “everybody understands the implication of having a budget that is predictable, a budget that starts from January through the 12 calendar months to December: that tells you our economy is going to receive a boost. It is an injection that will see more businesses, employment opportunities and of course, we hope that our teaming unemployed youths will now have opportunities to be gainfully employed.”
The Senate President stressed that stabilized budget operations will also support the private sector so well, adding: “we all know that the private sector employs much more than the government. So we are optimistic that the economy will receive a boost from this 2020 budget implementation by the grace of God. I believe we are on the right path.”
On the implementation of the budget, Senator Lawan said that the tragedy that had befallen budget implementation in the past, and in future is inability to get the revenues, saying: “but this time around, we have passed the finance bill. “The finance bill will provide more revenues to government. We have also passed an amendment to the production sharing contracts, that will also provide more revenues.
“We all know that the production sharing contracts was never available to fund our budget properly. In fact, in 2019, N350 billion was earmarked but we couldn’t get anything.
“Next year by the grace of God, because of the amendment, we are going to get close to $2 billion and that is going to be a mark difference from what it use to be.
“So, we are going to work on revenue generation, collection and remittance. :Once we are able to get our revenues, we are all determined on both sides to ensure that the budget 2020 is implemented fully and we believe the Nigerian public will be in support of this. “We continually ask for the support of Nigerians because governance is not about those in office, it is about everybody playing his/her role.
“I’m so confident and optimistic that we will have the revenue to implement the 2020 budget.
“We will work with the executive to ensure that the revenues continue to stream in.”
