Senate approves Buhari’s $6.1bn foreign loan request, passes N982.72bn supplementary budget

The Senate has approved the Federal Government’s request for a $6.1 billion (N2.343 trillion) loan request.

The Senate gave the approval on Wednesday after it considered a report from its Committee on Local and Foreign Debt which it earlier directed to work on the loan request.

Presenting the report on the floor during plenary, the Chairman of the committee, Senator Clifford Ordia said the request is not new as it was approved in the borrowing plan when the National Assembly passed the 2021 budget noting that it would be used to fund the budget deficit.

President Muhammadu Buhari had earlier in May asked the National Assembly to approve the loan request, saying it would be raised from multilateral and bilateral tenders as well as the international capital market.

The Committee recommended that the Senate approves Buhari’s request for the issuance of $3,000,000,000 but not more than $6,183,081,643.40 Eurobond in the International Capital Market.

The External Borrowing of N2,343,387,942,848, according to the panel, should be for the financing of part of the deficit authorised in the 2021 Appropriation Act.

The Committee also recommended that the Senate should approve that the amount authorised may be raised from multiple sources such as the International Capital Market and any other Multilateral or Bilateral sources as may be available.

Meanwhile, the Senate also on Wednesday passed 2021 Supplementary Budget of N982, 729,695,343.00 representing an increase of N87billion of the request presented to it two weeks ago by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari had proposed N895,842,465,917.00 but the Senate Committee on Appropriation in its report presented by the Chairman, Senator Jibrin Barau, increased it to N982,729,695,343.00

The breakdown of the budget showed that N123,332,174,164 is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while the sum of N859, 397,521,179 is for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure.

Buhari had said that the amount is needed to fund the COVID-19 vaccine programme and health related expenditures for treatment of additional 50,000 patients under the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS Programme in states.

He said part of the money would be used to procure additional equipment captured in this year’s capital expenditure on defence and security to combat security challenges across the country.