President Umaru Yar’Adua today signed into law a 3.1 trillion naira ($21.2 billion) budget for 2009, 8 percent higher than his original spending plan in December.Parliament last month increased Yar’Adua’s 2.87 trillion naira budget proposal, saying the government needed to spend more to revive sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest economy. The 2009 budget has spending up 17 percent on last year’s.Nigeria is the world’s eighth-biggest crude oil exporter and its economic outlook has been clouded by falling global energy prices, which have eaten into earnings and risk eroding its foreign reserves.The budget, which has been delayed for months, assumes a projected crude oil price of $45 per barrel and oil output of 2.3 million barrels per day.The benchmark exchange rate was set at 125 naira to the U.S. dollar. The local currency traded at 146.28 to the dollar last week.
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