Governor Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe State has presented N62.42 billion as Budget for 2010 to the State’s House of Assembly, with the Ministry of Works taking the lion’s share of N11.57 billion.
The governor explained that the budget would focus on completion of all on-going capital projects in the social and regional sectors of the state.
Presenting the budget tagged “Budget of Continuity” to the legislators at the House of Assembly complex, Damaturu, Gaidam said that out of
the total budgetary proposals, capital expenditures have been allocated N42.88 billion or 69 per cent, while recurrents would gulp about N19.54 billion.
He said the 2010 finance and appropriation bill, is to address poverty, as well as complete all the on-going projects in the five sectors of education, health, housing, water and electricity supplies, agriculture and security.
“The year 2010 which is barely less than 24 hours, be our final opportunity to consolidate, solidify and give the finishing touches to our efforts in the previous years,” he said.
In a breakdown of the budget proposals, he disclosed that out of the four main sectors, the economic sector has been allocated N16.96 billion or 40 per cent of the total budgetary allocations made to the Assembly.
The social and regional sectors were allocated budget proposals of N11.23 billion and N6.98 billion respectively, while general administration would gulp N7.71 billion or 18 per cent.
The governor pledged that the fight against poverty and unemployment among the youths, would be addressed through “intensive and integrated urban and rural development, stating that that could the focus and objectives of next year’s budget proposals to the 24-member House of Assembly.
While reviewing this year’s budget, he said due to the economic meltdown and falling internally generated revenues, the 2009 budget implementation has achieved 70 per cent level of performance.
He said in financing the budget proposals, the statutory allocations would generate N29.1 billion, while Value Added Tax and internally generated revenues (IGR) would respectively provide the financial backings of N6.23 billion and N2.54 billion.
Gaidam listed other sources of the budget’s financing to include external loans (N525.6 million), internal loans (N6.67 billion), grants (N1.88 billion) and excess crude oil of N9.962 billion.
He however, noted that even though the opening balance of the state government’s account, was N5.5 billion, the Yobe State Board of Internal Revenue would adopt a four-point measure of identifying new sources of generating more internal revenues.
He said: “We cannot continue to rely on the statutory allocations from the Federation Accounts and loans, because to fully implement next year’s budget the state’s board of internal revenue must be very aggressive in the identification and collection of local revenues.”
An advisory board, he said would be inaugurated on how to generate more revenues and achieve higher budget performance.
