The Presidency has rescheduled the extraordinary Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting expected to hold today to 12 noon on Monday, October 7th.
The Details: This was disclosed in a statement by Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity. The essence of the meeting was to fast track and finalize all changes made to the 2020 budget, which would be presented to the National Assembly by 2 PM on Tuesday.
Why the meeting was postponed: The FEC meeting usually holds Wednesday every week at 11 am at the Council Chamber of the Presidential villa. The meeting did not hold this week because the President departed Abuja on Wednesday to proceed on a three-day State Visit to the Republic of South Africa, following an invitation by President Cyril Ramaphosa, to discuss the welfare of Nigerians, and find common grounds for building harmonious relations with their hosts.
Recall the Nairametrics reported that the Nigerian Senate increased the proposed 2020 budget to N10.729 trillion from the initial N10.002 trillion. Also, the Senate approved all the 16 recommendations contained in the report of the National Assembly joint committee on Finance and National Planning, on the 2020-2022 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP).
Similarly, the Senate increased the oil benchmark from $55 per barrel to $57 per barrel, representing a $2 increase. The 2020 revenue target for the Nigerian Customs Service was also increased by N557.4 billion, from N942.6 billion to N1.5trillion. Meanwhile, the Senate retained the exchange rate at N305 per dollar and oil production benchmark at 2.18mbpd as proposed in the MTEF/FSP by the executive.
Recent Developments: A total of N311.8 billion was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for the construction and rehabilitation of two link roads connecting the Second Niger Bridge in the South East and several other projects being executed.
The roads meant to be covered according to the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, are the Ibadan-Ilesa-Ife road, the Second Niger Bridge to Asaba and Onitsha and phase II of the Kano-Katsina highway. Apart from the money approved for the construction of roads, an additional N1.833 billion has been approved by the FEC under the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) for programmes in the Ministry of Education.
