The House of Representatives yesterday approved the 2016-2018 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) of the federal government.
The approval of the House followed consideration of the report on MTEF at plenary yesterday after a robust debate even as the Senate had done same earlier on Wednesday.
The report of the Joint Committee on Finance, Appropriation, Aids, Loans and Debt Management was laid before the House by Hon. Babangida Ibrahim Mahuta on Wednesday for deliberation by the House Committee on Supply, which has the speaker and deputy speaker as chairman and deputy chairman respectively.
A summary of the report as approved by the House at plenary shows that $38 per barrel was approved as the benchmark price for crude oil in the 2016 Budget, while N197 to $1 was approved as exchange rate.
Also, a daily Crude Oil Production of 2.2000mbpd for the 2016 Budget was okayed by the House as recommended by the committee.
Speaker Yakubu Dogara thereafter announced the constitution of a Conference Committee from the House headed by the chairman of Committee on Finance, Hon. Mahuta, to liaise with its Senate counterpart in order to harmonise the discrepancies in their respective conclusions ahead of the budget presentation by President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday morning.