Reps may pass 2011 budget next week

Threaten to arrest NSPMC chiefBARRING any last-minute changes, the House of Representatives will next Tuesday pass the 2011 Appropriation Bill into law for onward transmission to the Senate for concurrence.The House has also disclosed that it would not extend the implementation of the 2010 Appropriation.To this end, the House yesterday directed all its committee chairmen to immediately submit their various reports to the Appropriation Committee for harmonisation and subsequent presentation to it at plenary.Deputy Speaker, Usman Bayero Nafada who presided over plenary yesterday, had expressed concern over the slow pace of reports from the budget consideration of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) by the House Standing committees, warning that such committees had only today to turn in their reports, failure of which the Appropriation Committee of the Chamber would be compelled to adopt the estimates sent in by the executive arm of the MDAs.You are to submit these reports tomorrow (today), failure of which the Appropriation Committee will be forced to adopt the Executive version of the budget. What we intend to do is to pass the budget by next week, he said.President Goodluck Jonathan had in December, 2010 written to the National Assembly seeking extension of deadline for the implementation of the 2010 budget implementation to March 31, 2011.The letter entitled, Request for Extension of 2010 Capital Budget to 31 March 2011, read in part: I am constrained to approach the National Assembly with this request for the extension of the implementation of the capital budget to 31 March, 2011. It is my hope that the National Assembly will, as usual, kindly consider and approve this request expeditiously to facilitate the full implementation of the 2010 capital budget.Meanwhile, the new minimum wage Bill may be passed by the House of Representatives today, as the House Joint committee on Labour, Employment and Productivity and Finance yesterday on the floor laid its report on the proposed amendment to the national minimum wage law.Consequently, the Ita Enang-led committee on Rules and Business was directed by Nafada to ensure that copies of the reports were made available to members to ensure a smooth consideration of the Bill and its subsequent passage.In another development, the House Committee on Banking and Currency has threatened to issue a warrant for the arrest of Managing Director, Nigeria Security, Printing and Mining Company, Ehi Okoyomon, for not honouring the invitation to attend a meeting for the discussion of the companys 2011 budget proposal.The committees Chairman, Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi, in a statement issued at the National Assembly yesterday, said the committee would however want to give Okoyomon another opportunity to appear before it next Tuesday, failure of which it would activate the instrument of arrest.The Committee views the attitude displayed by Okoyomon for his inability to appear as a cover up of some financial transactions engaged on behalf of the company, Ozomgbachi wrote.
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