President Muhammadu Buhari has shifted an emergency meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) over the 2016 budget, earlier scheduled for Friday to Monday next week.
The meeting is to finalise arrangements for Tuesday’s presentation of the 2016 budget to the National Assembly.
The minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, had after the FEC meeting held last Monday said the Federal Government had proposed an “expansionist” budget of N6 trillion for 2016.
Speaking on why the emergency FEC meeting was postponed, the minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said Thursday’s National Economic Council (NEC) meeting chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo threw up important things during the presentations that need to be looked into else the 2016 budget will be distorted.
He told State House correspondents that, “the meeting was not cancelled. It was postponed till Monday afternoon. The reason is that there was a meeting of the National Economic Council yesterday (Thursday). At that meeting, many of the key cabinet members made presentations. There were some fall-outs from those presentations that will necessitate going back to the original document that should have been discussed today. So we were given time between now and Monday to go and rejig our figures because when the NEC met, certain issues were thrown up that if they were not resolved, would distort the entire budget proposal. So we will all go back, each ministry will do its arrangement”.
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