Senate fails to pass 2023 Budget over “issues”, fixes new date

The Senate has moved up the deadline for passing the 2023 budget to December 28th, 2022.

The lawmakers also delayed the Finance Bill’s passage until December 28.

These declarations were made on Thursday during plenary presided over by Senate President Ahmad Lawan.

He clarified that the Senate is delaying the budget’s adoption due to some difficulties in getting the appropriations committee’s report on the 2023 budget.

The appropriations bill from the executive was presented to the National Assembly with certain issues, he continued, and when the committee went to reconcile the numbers, the issue became clear and challenging to handle.

Senator Lawan added that the executive was included in the budget cleanup process that the Senate Appropriations Committee had started with the 2023 budget.

The procedure was finished on Wednesday, December 21, but the Committee was unable to finish assembling the report in time for submission on Thursday.