Federal Executive Council Approves 2018 Budget Today

The Federal Executive Council is said to have approve the 2018 budget. The Council meeting, which was shifted from yesterday to today, has budget submission as the only item on 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.

According to Leadership, 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 deadline, Buhari had two weeks ago presented the 2018-2020 medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) and the fiscal strategy paper (FSP) to the House of Reps in preparation for the presentation of the 2018 budget.