David-Chyddy Eleke in Awka
Anambra State government has said that it is optimistic that its 2019 budget will receive over 80 per cent implementation, saying that the state has remained top in budget performance since Governor Willie Obiano took the reins of power in the state.
The state Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr Mark Okoye, said this at a news conference on the 2020 proposed budget presented to the Anambra State House of Assembly two weeks ago.
Okoye said, “The good thing about Anambra is that we present budget that we can implement 100 per cent. There is no use presenting N1 trillion budget that would end up with just 10 per cent implementation.
“In Anambra, we plan with internally generated revenue, rather than on external revenue. We do this because internal revenue is sure, but external can fail. There can be a dip in oil price, or federal government can fail in payment.
“This has been our tactics and it has been working for us. That is why every year, we register 60, 70 and even 80 percent performance in our budget, when other states are finding it difficult to hit 50 per cent.
“Last year, even the federal government could barely achieve 30 per cent, but we were able to achieve 70 per cent of our budget. This year, we already have a half year budget performance, which was in June. We have registered 83 per cent in recurrent expenditure and about 87 per cent in capital expenditure. We are hopeful that at the end of the year, we will have an overall performance of over 80 per cent, and that is very huge,” Okoye said.
The commissioner added that it hopes that the federal government would be able to pay at least N10billion to the state as reimbursement of about N42billion spent on fixing federal roads in the state.
He said the state received a promissory note of N15billion from the federal government last year, for refund on money spent on federal roads, but needed to trade off about 25 per cent of the money if it must access the cash.
“Our governor is a very prudent man. You know he came from the banking sector, so instead of that, he decided to hold the note until maturity, because trading off 25 per cent of that money will not be beneficial to Anambra people,” Okoye said.
