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PAUL OMOKUVIE, BAUCHI
Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, on Tuesday presented a budget of N167, 215,807, 500 for the 2020 fiscal year to the state House of Assembly for approval.
Presenting the budget on the floor of the Assembly, the governor said that the proposed budget, tagged, “Budget of Renewal of Hope”, was lower than the previous years because “government doesn’t intend to spend much but this time around, we want it done right by proposing budget that is implementable.”
According to him, the proposed budget, which he admitted would be realistic to capture programmes and policies, consists of a recurrent expenditure of N72, 615,397,214, or 43 per cent while capital project amounted to N94,600,410,286, which is 57 per cent of the proposed budget.
The revenue expenditure of the 2020 proposed budget is N102,474, 311, 276 with the state government projecting an internal revenue of N21,861,924,840 and statutorily allocation of N80,612,386,436, he said.
The governor said that the proposed budget will also include overhead of N21,816,145,210, personnel cost of 29,537,346,320, and consolidated revenue fund charges of N,216,905,684.
Reviewing the performance of the 2019 budget, the governor lamented that it has been largely low due to the change in mantle of leadership in the state.
“Out of N73, 640,952,998, only the sum of N38,038,048,688 representing 51.65 percent was realized as at 30th September 2019. In the same vein, Value Added Task (VAT) Revenue recorded performance of only 45 percent as N9,294,364,256,39 was realised against the budget figure of N21,294,364,256. The low performance continues in virtually all the revenue sources,” he said.
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Governor Mohammed said for the 2020 proposed budget, the health sector (N26, 928,290,461 or 16.10 percent) and the education sector (25,774,394,131 or 15.42 percent) are given the Lion share, followed closely by water resources which was given a huge chunk of N15, 081,410, 668 or 9.2 percent.
The governor also said that his administration would pay attention to priority areas of health, education, agriculture, youth empowerment, job creation, community development, poverty reduction, mining, tourism, and cooperative development.
Others he said are provision of infrastructure through the construction and rehabilitation of roads as well as water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
He disclosed that to address the neglect in the health sector, the administration will renovate and construct at least one General Hospital per local government.
In his speech the Speaker, Bauchi State House of Assembly, Right Hon Abubakar Sulieman thanked the governor and assured that the 2020 budget presented to the Assembly will be given expeditious passage by members.
According to him, in doing this, however, the Assembly will diligently scrutinized it.and ensure smooth passage into law.
He, however, urged on all the state’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to give maximum cooperation to the Assembly’s various standing committees during the budget defence and oversight functions.
Sulieman added that the committees will continue to embark on quarterly monitoring of the budget performance to ensure effective implementation.
