Nigeria's government is in talks with parliament over the country's 2011 budget proposal and expects to agree an amended version with a narrower deficit within weeks, the head of the budget office said on Tuesday.
President Goodluck Jonathan initially proposed a 4.226 trillion naira ($27.32 billion) budget in December but parliament inflated the spending plans, passing a 4.972 trillion naira version three months later.
Government has said the 2011 budget is supposed to mark the beginning of a period of fiscal consolidation in sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest economy and Finance Minister Olusegun Aganga described the amended version, which would push the deficit to over four percent, as "unimplementable".
He vowed in March to take the issue up with parliament.
"We are very, very deep in the negotiations, we have gone very far," Bright Okogu, director general of the budget office, told reporters on the sidelines of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) event in the commercial capital Lagos.
"We have both recognised in all our preliminary discussions that there is a need to come back to a more realistic budget deficit level," he said.
The original budget plan presented by Jonathan implied a deficit of around 3.6 percent. Okogu said the final version would push the deficit "back in that direction".
Presidential, parliamentar
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