George Okoh in Makurdi
Benue State Government has presented its 2017 Appropriation Bill of N178, 377,811,608.00 to members of the Benue State House of Assembly for consideration.
Governor Samuel Ortom, while presenting Appropriation Bill tagged ‘Budget of Rural Transformation and Consolidation Budget’ said the budget was prepared based on his administration’s blueprint, “Our Collective Vision for a New Benueâ€, the Ten Year Development Plan and the International Public Sector Accounting Standards to engender transparency, accountability and good governance as Benue move steadily in delivering the dividends of democracy to our people.â€
According to him, out of the total of N178.3 billion 2018 estimate, total sum of N77,761,072,616.00 only is projected as recurrent expenditure in 2018 representing 44%, while capital expenditure for fiscal year would stand at N100,616,738,991.00.00 only representing 56% of the total expenditure.
Under sectoral allocation the governor said N25,228,246,978 only representing 14.14% is for administration while the economic sectors will take highest share of allocated of N87,587,490,292 only representing 49.10%.
Ortom said “Law and Justice take the lest allocation of N3,387,187,927, representing 1.90% while Social will get N62,174,886,411 only, representing 34.86%”.
He noted that the challenges that may militate against the 2018 budget were many but in order to mitigate them, there would be a Strategy Committee on Revenue, Development Cooperation and Agriculture value chains to be chaired by himself.
The Governor stated that assumptions for the budget include improved revenue sharing, strengthening of internally generated revenue collection, and blockage of leakages, financial management reforms as well as political and economic stability in 2018.
He stated that the challenges of the budget include adequate revenue inflow, sustainable payment of wages to all legitimate workers and pensioners, payment of cost of running government, funding capital projects and contracts.
