The Senate has removed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) from the budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year.
The Senate reached the decision to exclude the NBC from the budget following submissions by officials of the agency that the commission can sufficiently sustain itself without subventions from government.
The NBC said it was willing to make such sacrifice in the spirit of the current efforts by the Senate through its Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning to reduce Nigeria’s budget deficit for 2021.
NBC’s budget for 2019 stood at about N3.7 billion; with a wage bill N600milion.
The Commission received “Zero Allocation” for Capital expenditure in 2019.
The broadcast regulator however returned N1 billion into the Federation Account after spending about N1.3 billion in the year under review; leaving another N1.4 billion yet to be accounted for.
With the exclusion of NBC from the budget; the agency will have to depend heavily on its revenue sources which come mainly from licence fees; levies and fines from broadcast stations in the country.