President Goodluck Jonathan has presented the 2013 budget to a joint section of the Legislature – Senate and the House of Representatives. He presented 4.93 trillion naira ($31.35 billion), with cuts to recurrent expenditure and increase in spending, in key areas. He based the revenue to fund the budget from oil at $75 per barrel, with production at 2.53 million barrels per day.
He projected a GDP growth of 6.5%, which will see deficits come down to about 2.17% of GDP. He has proposed cutting recurrent expenditure to 68.7% of the budget and that the government will issue a $1billion Eurobond next year for a gas pipeline project. Bits of the budget include, 426.5 billion to Education, 348.9billion to Defence, N279 billion to Health and N74.2 billion to Power.
