 And in Business News, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmad, said that despite the very difficult circumstances caused by COVID-19, the Nigerian economy has continued to sustain its growth. Zainab Ahmad stated this when she appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance to speak of the five-day interactive session on the 2023-2025 medium-term expenditure framework and the fiscal strategy paper. Ahmad said that there was gradual improvement across the sector's economy in the country. Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Adebola Solomons, in his opening remarks decried the level of proposed deficit of the 2023 budget. The Nigerian economy has continued to sustain its growth since the last recession in Q3 of 2020. We have witnessed so far five quarters of consecutive growth with the second quarter of 2022, posting a growth of 3.54 percent in real terms, compared to 3.11 percent in the previous quarter of 2022. Of this, 8.46 trillion, 1.99 trillion or 23 percent is projected to come from oil-related sources, while the balance is from the non-oil sources. Again, this is emphasizing that the Nigerian government expenditure is largely funded by non-oil revenues. So for 2023, the oil revenue sources are contributing 23.6 percent to the government budget. Again, in scenario two, the federal government aggregate expenditure is projected to be 19.76 trillion, and this is inclusive of expenditures of 64 government-owned enterprises that we have been aggregating and bringing into the national budget. In this scenario, the budget deficit is projected to be 11.3 trillion in 2023, and this is up from 7.35 trillion in 2022. On the need to reduce government yearly budget deficit, resulting in massive borrowing from local and international sources, it is this wise that the committee frown at the projected 12.41 trillion budget deficit contained in the 2023-25 MTF FSB, and the alarming projection of non-provision of Treasury-funded MDs capital projects in 2023. This scenario is unacceptable, and we must find ways to drastically reduce this deficit, this among us figure. It is apparent that the borrowing trend cannot be allowed to continue unchecked, and conscious effort must be made to reduce the budget deficit, achieving these goals require us to look inward towards increasing the revenue generation, blocking of leakages, and restraining on what are generally frivolous expenditure by MDs, particularly the government-owned enterprises.