Paul Osuyi, Asaba
Delta State Government has slashed its 2020 budget from N395.4 billion to N279.8 billion in line with harsh economic realities posed by the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic.
This was contained in a letter of Amendment Bill and Schedules of the Revised Budget by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa to the House of Assembly.
House Speaker, Sheriff Oborevwori, read the letter at plenary yesterday, when the revised budget also passed its second reading after the House adopted it for consideration.
The amendment bill was referred to the House Committee on Finance and Appropriation for further legislative actions.
The proposed revised 2020 budget is made up of N152.7 billion recurrent expenditure and N127.1 billion capital expenditure.
Okowa explained that the new financial framework has 11.13 percent decrease from the earlier approved N172 billion recurrent expenditure budget while the capital budget of N223 billion was reduced by 40.09 percent.
The governor said the earlier sum was hinged on some macro-economic and financial projections usually relied upon by government for budgetary purposes.
He regretted that the macro-economic and financial indices can no longer be relied upon for funding of the 2020 budget due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic which has triggered a sharp drop in the price of crude oil and slide in the exchange rate with the attendant negative effect on the revenue accruable to government.
The governor said the new budget is 29.25 percent drop from the earlier approved 2020 budget of N395.4 billion.