The appropriation bill which is tagged, ‘Budget of Growth, by the governor’ has a 15 per cent
nominal increase over that of 2017 and would be used to consolidate on the infrastructural and socio-economic gains of the outgoing year.
But the budget presentation came to an abrupt end when the governor expressed concern over the heat in the legislative chamber, minutes after electricity supply was interrupted and the air conditioners shut down.
“Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on but I am sorry that the environment here is a bit inclement. So, permit me to end this budget presentation by thanking everyone who has made the last one year a remarkable and successful one for my administration,” Obaseki said.
Earlier, the governor had disclosed that while N79.8bn was earmarked for capital expenditure, N66.7bn was voted for recurrent expenditure, with a percentage comparison of 54 per cent to 46 per cent respectively.
He explained that the budget estimate was based on a benchmark of $45 per barrels and a daily production of 2.3 billion barrels per day as well as the increase in the internally generated revenue.
We expect the total receipts from federation sources, including the opening balances we will carry over, to be N75bn compared to the N15bn received last year. We expect that the IGR would be N30bn, compared to our estimate of N26bn last year. We are very confident that we will achieve this goal.
“We believe that our total cash receipt will be N120bn compared to N107bn last year, while our recurrent expenditure has been kept at N66bn, which is the same as what we estimated in the 2017 budget. We estimate that in the 2018 budget we will spend N79.8bn for capital (expenditure) compared to N66.7bn for recurrent (expenditure) and we will have a budget deficit of N26.560bn.”
The governor stated that the budget deficit would be financed by a mix of internal and external loans, including an estimate of N1.5bn to be sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria special intervention fund targeted at agriculture for job creation, and N25.6bn to be sourced from external projects financed from the World Bank.
Posts
