The Senate Committee on Finance will begin the consideration of the 2020-2023 Medium Term Expenditure and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) on Wednesday next week.

Chairman Senate Committee on Finance, Sen Solomon Adeola, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, said the Senate Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning has dispatched invitations to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), with presentations to make on the document, to appear before the panel.

He stressed the need to examine the rationale for pegging the price of crude oil at $40 per barrel and a projected crude oil production of 1.86 million barrels per day (mbpd) in the MTEF/FSP.

“We are kick-starting the process on Wednesday with Government Owned Enterprises(GOEs) like NNPC, NCC, NPA, Custom Service, NIMASA, DPR and others followed by the Ministry of Finance and its agencies and subsequently all revenue generating agencies,” he said.

He urged heads of MDAs to be prepared to defend their projections “as the Joint Committee intends to present the report to the Senate in plenary immediately on resumption from its ongoing vacation in tandem with the desire of the upper chamber to pass the 2021 in December.

The 2021-2023 MTEF/FSP was received by the Senate on July 20, 2020 and referred to the Senate Joint Committees on Finance and National Planning for further legislative work.

Adeola insisted that there is need for thorough scrutiny of the MTEF/FSP document in view of the fluid nature of the world economy following the disruptive impact of COVID-19 pandemic and the vagaries of the international market for crude oil and its attendant effects on the nation’s sources of revenue.

“There is need for all stakeholders to come together to critically study the fundamentals of the “new normal” forced on the global economy by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With the instability witnessed in the price of crude oil at the international market and the sluggish world economy with some nations falling into recession, there is need to assess our situation critically and be realistic about our revenues sources for budgets going forward,” he said.