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Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
Benue State House of Assembly on Friday passed into law the appropriation bill of N189,483 511, 025 for the 2020 fiscal year.
It would be recalled that on November 12, 2019, the state governor, Samuel Ortom presented a budget of N189,483,511,025 to the House for the 2020 fiscal year.
Christened “Budget of Advancement, Growth and Development,” the governor said the budget would ensure adequate provision for implementation of programmes that impact positively on the economy and accelerate growth as well as ensure completion of on-going projects and the consistent payment of emoluments.
However, the Assembly approved the passage after considering and adopting the reports and recommendations of House Standing Committee on Appropriation presented at plenary by its Chairman, Hon. Peter Enemari.
The appropriation committee had looked at the following bills, “A bill for a law to make provisions for the financing of the appropriation for the year ending the 31st day of December, 2020 and for purposes connected therewith.
“A bill for a law to make provisions for the appropriation of recurrent expenditure for the year ending the 31day of December and for purposes connected therewith.
“A bill for a law to make provisions for the appropriation of capital expenditure for the year ending the 31day of December 2020 and for the purposes connected therewith.”
A breakdown of the budget figure as approved by the House indicates that N114,548, 525,887 is for recurrent expenditure, while N74,934,955,138 is for capital expenditure and N43,109,050,976 is for deficit financing.
The economic sector got the highest vote of N73,790,691,145, while the social sector got the second highest allocation of N64,613,349,889 even as the administrative sector as well as Law and justice sector got N48,278, 003, 228 and N2,801,446,763 respectively.
Our correspondent gathered that the 2020 proposed estimates is less than the 2019 approved estimates by N10,261532, 885 which according to findings of the House, performed abysmally on revenue and capital expenditures.
Speaker of the Assembly, Titus Uba who announced the passage of the budget commended members for achieving the feat of passing the bill in a record time for the betterment of the Benue people and for the success of the state government.
