Senate to adopt $78 oil benchmark for 2015

The Senate is set to adopt the
proposed $78 as the country's oil
price benchmark for 2015 fiscal
year.
The discosure was
made on Tuesday at the joint meeting on
2015-2017 Medium Term
Expenditure Framework
organised by Senate Joint
Committees in Abuja.
The Committees are Finance,
National Planning, Economic
Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
Chairman Senate Committee on
Finance, Sen. Ahmed Makarfi,
who presided said the process
would be concluded before a
final decision was taken.
According to him, the various
committees do not have any
major objections on the
proposed figure.
The Federal Government in the
2015-2017 Medium Term
Expenditure Framework and
Fiscal Strategy Paper proposed
the figure for 2015.
The document had reminded the
Committees members on the
need to take cognisance of the
global supply-demand balance
that was edging out the recent
spikes in oil price.
According to the paper, there is
increasing supply arising from
exploitation of sale oil and gas
and Iranian sanctions
suspension leading to global
surplus crude oil production
capacity.
It said the import of the
development was an indicator
that the high oil price recorded
in recent past would not be long-
lived.
"Against this backdrop and need
to rebuild our fiscal buffers, we
approached the estimation of
our benchmark price with
caution," the document said.
On revenue collection, Makarfi
said the committees were
delighted with the effort been
made by both the Federal Inland
Revenue Service and the Nigerian
Customs Service so far.
He, however, said the two most
important organs of revenue
collection must increase their
targets with a view to attract
more funds to the federation
account.
"It is not enough to set an
achievement target, we are of
the opinion that the agencies
could bring more than they are
remitting now," Ahmed said.
The NCS has already met its set
target for 2014 by remitting
N713bn since September.
Sen. Joshua Dariye (PDP-Plateau),
a member of one of the
Committees, said heads of
strategic establishments should
make financial projections they
could handle within their
tenures.
He said strong measures must be
taken to block leakages in
revenue collections.
However, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala, who led the team to the
hearing, said modalities were
been put in place to encourage
transparency in the system.