Bassey Inyang in Calabar
The Cross River State Governor, Professor Ben Ayade, has presented a budget of N1.43 trillion for the 2019 fiscal year.
Ayade, while presenting the budget christened ‘Budget of Qabalistic Densification’, the highest state budget in the country, said the budget was “magical and spiritual in nature that could only be achieved by strategic long term plan.”
Presenting the budget to the state House of Assembly, the governor said the budget would deal mostly on issues of industrialisation that would cut across all the local government areas in the state with connection to the superhighway and deep sea port.
“This year’s budget is tagged: ‘Qabalistic Densification’; it is a magical budget of concentrating all of our ideas and ideals into a cumulative action point that will deliver with escape velocity.
“This budget is ambitious, but driven by intellectual strength. It is N1.430, 967,000,000.
“The budget seems to address the fundamental trust of our governance agitator creating a property direction and partway focusing on the realisation of the core mandate of this government shifting Cross River State from third world to first world within eight years and that can only be achieved by a strategic long term plan,” Ayade said.
The governor said the budget would deal effectively with the issue of the active industrialisation of every local government area.
Though the governor was silent on the projection for current and recurrent expenditure, he disclosed that N1.8billion is used to service the state’s debt every month.
Ayade stated that 35 percent of the 2019 budget would be allocated to infrastructure, but was silent on allocations to other sectors.
The governor also gave a hinted on the performance of the state 2018 N1. 3 trillion ‘Budget of kinetic Crystallisation’.
He said: “The performance efficiency of the last year budget of Kinetic Crystallisation which sort to the crystallization of most of the projects that were conceived as a product of this vision that were infinitely transposed, in Quabalistic Densification it focuses on the Kinetic Crystallization of what we achieved in 2018.
“The last year’s budget had over 74 percent performance on a budget of N1.3trillion, that cannot be under appealed by understanding what comes if we want to look at the budget IT office releasing the total sum of N36billion as the total accruable revenue to cross river state in the year 2018 by federal government by the way of our allocation, that is inconsistent with the real achievements.
“I give you a good example. The superhighway construction has started in full force, and if you are driving as you are approaching Ikom to the left and to the right, you can see the massive work going on there that contract valued at N644 billion; the deep sea port massive preconstruction works is full gear, that also account for at least another N88 billion, and as this figures come, you can see in action value, 74 percent of what has been estimated have been accomplished.”
