PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu has shifted the 2025 budget presentation to the National Assembly to Wednesday, December 18.

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Sabi Abdullahi, reportedly told Senate press corps journalists on Monday, December 16.

Abdullahi hinted that the executive needed to do a work or two on the budget.

“The budget presentation has been postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday

“The executive just needs to make one or two adjustments to the budget,” he was quoted to have said.

Earlier, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, had told state house correspondents that the National Assembly was considering shifting Tinubu’s budget presentation to Wednesday.

He had hinted at a likely postponement of the budget presentation to Wednesday, adding that only the National Assembly could decide when the President could present the budget to the legislators.

The ICIR reported that the president had earlier scheduled Tuesday, December 17, to lay the budget before the joint sitting of the upper and lower chambers.

The 47.9 trillion 2025 budget was to be laid before a joint session of the national assembly on Wednesday, Senate President Godswill Akpabio announced on Thursday, December 12, at the plenary.

He said, “The President has made his intention known to the National Assembly to present the 2025 budget to the joint session of the National Assembly on the 17th of December, 2024.”

The Federal Government had adopted the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper for 2025–2027, with a proposed budget size of N47.9 trillion for the 2025 fiscal year.

Key parameters set in the document include an oil price benchmark of $75 per barrel, oil production of 2.06 million barrels per day, an exchange rate of N1,400 to $1, and a gross domestic product growth of 4.6 per cent.

It also includes a borrowing plan of N13.8 trillion for the proposed year.

However, it does appear that the 2025 budget, which will be Tinubu’s second appropriation bill to the national assembly, may miss the January-December budget cycle.

He presented the 2024 budget to the national assembly on November 29, 2023, and requested the chambers to pass it before December 31, 2023.

On January 1, he signed the N28.7 trillion 2024 appropriation bill into law to keep up with the January-December budget cycle.