2016 budget to be passed before March 31– Senator Ndume

Following public outcry on when the present Senate
will pass this
year’s budget, the Leader of the Senate, Ali Ndume,
on Sunday revealed
that the Senate is working towards passing the
budget before the
end of March.
Ndume stated that contrary to Media reports, the
Senate did not
suspend its passage indefinitely, but only said that
the 25th of
February `may not be feasible.
He said the National Assembly was to pass the
budget five weeks before the expiration of the
period set for the
implementation of the 2015 budget, but that was
not possible due to
some errors.
He said, “We have not postponed it indefinitely; we
are saying that
with the developments that we are seeing as the
time goes on, the 25th
February deadline we gave ourselves may not be
realistic.
“That is why we now said that going by this, it is
not possible to say
we will come back on 25th and say this is the
budget; we are not
saying that we have suspended it indefinitely.
“The reason we fixed 25th was because we wanted
to have a gap of five weeks.”
Ndume noted that between now and the end of
March when it is expected
that the budget will be passed, the Senate would
have fixed whatever issues
that needed to be fixed.