By Ahmed Idris
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Mr. Udoma Udo Udoma, said on Wednesday that President Muhammadu Buhari is yet to receive the 2018 budget a week after it was passed by legislators at the National Assembly.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the weekly FEC meeting in Abuja, the minister said he could only comment on the budget after examining it.
“We are yet to receive the budget. So it is impossible for anybody to have made a statement from the executive about budget until we actually receive the budget and go through the budget.
“So, any story you read in any newspaper cannot be correct because nobody in the executive is in a position until we examine the budget to make any statement about it. But once we get it (budget) we will work very, very quickly,’’ he said.
The minister told journalists that he updated FEC that on the latest GDP report for the 1st quarter of 2018 which was released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.
He said the council was impressed and encouraged by the report which showed a GDP growth rate of 1.95 per cent.
