 The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation had an audience today at the National Assembly for very important MDAs to explain their budget projections and expectations for the year 2024. Chairman of the committee, Honorable Abubakabichi, before the greening of the heads of the MDAs present on day two of the ongoing exercise. 27 trillion may look very big, but considered our you know, inflation, exchange rate and all of that, we believe that we really have to look into it and to support Mr. President to actualize his eight-point agenda. No matter how Mr. President wants to actualize his agenda, he needs some funds, he needs some money, and the only way for him to get money through all these GOE's and to see how we can interact with them, how we can have more funding to support Mr. President to actualize his dreams. That's the reason why we said let's call all the GOE's and all the Minister of Finance to see how we can move on, how we can get more revenues to support Mr. President to actualize his dreams for Nigeria. We believe that the budget was perfect, brilliant budget, but of course without funding it's going to be a serious problem. The Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Eredo, threw more light on the issues around government borrowing plans and constraints on the 2024 budgets amongst others. Look at the budget, it even indicates that we are looking to equity, we are looking to privatization even though the estimates for revenue from there are relatively modest, but it's the direction of travel and intention that is important. So we'll be looking to get more revenue from across the board of government business, which means the government-owned enterprises, the Parastate House, as well as looking to private sector investment. The committee at this point proceeded to pose questions on the expected budget projections from the various MDAs and expectations and how to achieve it. We need to find a balance so that Nigerians don't get overtaxed, one. Secondly, so that small businesses don't crumble in the process of beefing up taxation. And then doesn't it also contradict the government's interest in foreign direct investment, won't that rather scare away foreign investment when they hear that we are raising taxation? So is there the way we are going to find a balance? That's number one. Then the second one is what, as Minister of Finance, what are we doing seriously to reduce the cost of running government? In their responses, all the MDAs are sure that they will do everything possible to ensure increase in their 2024 revenue generation. In terms of the percentage of the total that we are targeting for 2023, this amounts to about eighty-eight-one percent of our projected revenue. We still have some few days in 2023. We are a little bit optimistic that we will be able to give the target a very good shot. An analysis of our performance in 2023 shows that we had a very, very slow start to the year. And we know that there were a number of factors that were responsible for the slow performance in the year. But these are things that have been troubled a little bit from the second quarter, from the third quarter of the year. And we've moved from an average of about 200 billion per month in the first half of the year to something in the region of 350 billion per month in the second half of the year.