President Muhammadu Buhari will present the 2018 budget to parliament on Nov 7, he said in a letter on Thursday, seeking to avoid the delays that have plagued previous budgets, not passed until well into the years they targeted.
The letter was read in the lower house of parliament by the chamber’s speaker, Yakubu Dogara.
Nigeria, with Africa’s largest economy, is seeking to spend heavily to promote growth. The country only just climbed out of its first recession in 25 years in the second quarter of 2017, but still grew at a slow clip.
Each of Buhari’s budgets has set a record high level of spending, but economists say implementation, particularly on capital expenditure that is meant to jump-start infrastructure building, has been lacking.
At the same time, previous budgets have been beset by wrangling with lawmakers over line items. The 2017 budget was not signed into law until halfway through the year, and even then certain spending was still being debated.
Although Buhari did not disclose details of the budget, the government last month published a document that said the budget would be a record 8.6 trillion naira ($27.3 billion) in 2018, up 15.5 percent from this year.
Once Buhari has presented the 2018 budget to lawmakers, it must still be approved by the lower and upper chambers of parliament before it can be signed into law, a process that can take many months.
