 Nigeria's renewed hope budget set to be approved in January 2024 aims for fiscal sustainability, economic growth and security, marking the country's highest ever budget. Joining us now to look at the 2024 budget presentation is an international finance and economic analyst Mukhtar Mohamed. Good evening and welcome to our news, Mukhtar. Thank you for having me this evening. Okay, we've seen this ambitious budget that the president has said is going to see to a job field economy and is going to address security issues and so many other concerns. And both the House of Reps and the Senate are very confident that this budget is going to do just what it has said it's going to do. Do you share the same opinion with them? I'm happy that you use my word that I've been using throughout today when I saw the budget. Ambitious, very, very ambitious budgets and ambitious administration. When you look at the key indices of those budgets, you just wish if they would come to pass then that would really be good. But where I am now, where I'm seated now, what I'm seeing, I am not as optimistic as they are, but maybe they have better information than me because I've not seen the details of this budget. Maybe they have seen the details. We are still waiting for the minister for budget and planning to give us more details. But where I am now with what the president have listed are key areas I can say for sure. It will be very, very difficult to get this budget up on screen. You're looking at the GDP of 3.7. I mean, how is that achievable in an economy that is struggling to even pay salaries for a civil servant that we say the bull and 45 percent of revenue is going into theft services? But again, you will be happy that it's less than what was happening before. Before we knew what 87 to 90 percent of our revenue was going to theft services. So we are 45 percent. Also, you look at the oil benchmark. I was excited at 73, but it moved to 79. I mean, 77, but you know, you and I know that that might not be the end because it was also may decide to jack it up. So in terms of other variables of that budget, exchange rate was moved from 700 to 750. It's still, I mean, for me, that's the right price of the narrative. But unfortunately, there's no liquidity. So I hope they will be able to attract liquidity to maintain that rate. I'm excited again that we'll see a foreign foreign borrowing is coming down. I mean, it's about 30. Is it about 30 to 33 percent in domestic borrow is going to go up. And with domestic borrow, you don't have to deal with currency fluctuation, exchange rate volatility. So again, I'm also excited that budget deficit has come down from 11 trillion to 9 trillion. And so I'm also excited that we're looking at revenue at 18 trillion, but oil production at 1.78 million bar per day revenue at 18 trillion. And the president have assured that more businesses will not be taxed, but they will widen the tax bracket, get one and get into tax. So we are waiting, we are watching, but like you said, it's a very ambitious budget. Yeah, but to realize all the things that are in the budget, it goes beyond just voting money for particular things to be done. Do you see a policy direction that is going to help the country achieve what they want to achieve with this kind of a budget? Policy direction, one trillion dollar economy. That way we are moving to. So I'm surprised that Mr. President never made mention of it today, this budget presentation, the one trillion dollar economy. I thought that was what we should be hearing all through. So I think that's a policy roadmap. I want to get economy that one trillion dollar. The statement, like I said, is more or less like a politician is telling us what you do like you stay campaigning. But we are waiting for those details to know if this budget can see the light of the day. Like you rightly pointed out, you need a lot of structuring to be able to get this budget right. You need to look at how can you govern it? The presidency will drop by inflation from a high of 30 percent to 21.4 percent. That is extremely ambitious. And he said, the cost of doing business will come down with the rising cost of energy. I wonder how we are going to achieve that. So there's a, we need a lot of structure to be put in here. And that's what I'm saying that we might just have to wait for the minister of budget and planning. The boring is still there. Remember, Mr. President is born about 7.8 billion, even if he has a monorail throne of about 22 years under the percentage of 2.5 percent, which is not bad. And so that's why our debt profile has not gone up, because we're not stopping in that debt until 23 years from now. So he said those are going to critical infrastructure. You know, the president keeps saying critical infrastructure. We need to know what these critical infrastructures are. That's what we'll be asking the minister for budget and planning, because it's good. Boring itself is not a bad idea. But we must be sure that we are boring for capital expenditure. And this expenditure can be able to take care of themselves to provide the needed liquidity to pay off this debt. It's not just boring for consumption. Like what we saw in the supplementary budget, where almost all of it, all of it, was made up of consumption. With the exception, even with that, the exception of the school, the student loan, but again, that also is made for consumption because it's not bringing any money into the economy. So I'm not really very, very optimistic. I think it's an ambitious budget. But again, we have to wait and see if we see the light of the day. Well, let's hope that the words of the speaker of the House of Representatives will come to pass, where they will have to pass this budget by the people and see how or feel the pulse of the people and see if they like it, or there are things that need to be adjusted a little bit. We'd like to thank you so much, Mukta, for coming on the program this evening. Thank you for having me. Have a lovely night. Good night.