The Senate has passed the long-awaited 2018-2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).

The Upper Chamber in the MTEF documents passed raised the oil benchmark for the 2018 budget from the $45 per barrel as proposed by the Federal Government to $47 ‎while daily production was put at 2.3 million barrel per day, with exchange rate pegged at N305 to $1‎

The Senate took the decision at Tuesday’s sitting after consideration and adoption of the report by its Joint Committee on Finance, Appropriations, and National Planning and Economic Affairs on the 2018-2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper.‎

‎The lawmakers also approved N5.279 trillion for non revenue oil in 2018, N1.6999 trillion for new borrowing for 2018.

In a related development, Senate passed for second reading the 2018 budget which was presented to a joint session of the National Assembly by President Buhari, was referred to the Appropriation committee and other sub-committees.

‎The upper legislative chamber, which started debate on the budget earlier last week, passed the budget during the Tuesday’s plenary session. ‎

‎President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, who presided over the plenary, referred the budget to the Senate Committee on Appropriation and sub-committees for further engagement with various MDAs to report in two weeks.

Saraki charged the legislators to objectively review the plan expenditures and review the revenues in line with the main objectives of the budget. ‎

‎Saraki assured that not even a single minute would be wasted on side of the National Assembly in the course of getting the budget approved. ‎

The upper chamber of the National Assembly has also adjourned plenary to December 19, 2017, to allow the standing committees to hold budget defence sessions for federal ministries, departments and agencies.‎‎‎

‎The total size of the budget is estimated at N8.612 trillion.