Nigeria’s government plans to reallocate more than $630 million in supplementary budget, Bloomberg revealed. Funds are expected to ease impending spending with particular focus on the 2018 budget.

A letter from President Muhammadu Buhari (photo) to Senate indicated that part of the money will serve to prepare for general elections estimated at over $671.1 million (scheduled for February 2019). For the record, parliament adopted last May a record budget of $25 billion for the 2018/2019 fiscal year, up 18.42% over the previous year's budget. And Buhari, who proposed a lower budget of $23.9 billion, expressed concern about the economy’s capacity to bear such budget.

“Implementing a budget of 9.12 trillion naira will be extremely challenging and therefore, I do not consider it expedient to propose a further increase to the size,” he said in the letter, according to Bloomberg.

Let’s recall that, the Budget Minister indicated last June that the state was considering borrowing about $4.5 billion to finance the budget.

Moutiou Adjibi Nourou