Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State has sent a budget estimate of N136.62bn for the 2020 fiscal year to the State House of Assembly for approval.
The 2020 budget outlay is slightly less than the 2019 budget of N140,944,885,770, a moderate decrease, which the Governor said was occasioned by his administration’s resolve to formulate a realistic budget while working hard to improve revenue generation and expenditure management approach.
Presenting the 2020 budget estimates to the House of Assembly on Monday, Ikpeazu explained that the draft budget was made up of a total sum of N66.8bn as recurrent expenditure and N69.82bn for capital expenditure.
He stated that the recurrent expenditure represents 48.90 percent of the total budget, while the capital expenditure represents 51.10 percent of the budget.
He stated that the State Government expected a total inflow of N106.94bn.
The expected total revenue for the 2020 fiscal year is made up N67. 25bn, from the statutory allocation of the federation account allocation committee (FAAC) representing 62.89 percent of the recurrent revenue. Independent revenue is projected to be N39.69bn, representing 37.11 percent.
=The governor announced that the State’ 2020 budge, would further strengthen governance with renewed commitment to people’s wellbeing through intense citizens’ engagement and community needs identification initiative (CNII) in project selection to meet the community charter of demand (CCD).
“There will be deliberate efforts to sustain measures and improve on our internally generated revenue as well as measures to encourage various economic empowerment programmes to reduce the level of poverty and unemployment among the youths,” he said.
He explained that the strategic premise for the 2020 budget included provision of an enabling environment for investors, completion of on-going projects, encouragement and support for entrepreneurship development.
He stated also that the State would develop human capital, massively promote made in Abia goods and services, develop agricultural value chain, initiate strategic reforms and sustain value reorientation in the public service, and support growth of SMEs. The State would also intensify the realisation of the Enyimba Economic City project, sustain its commitment to the provision of needed infrastructure and provide an environment for peace and security.
“We are adopting an innovative approach towards engagement of resources and partnership with stakeholders to bring about different results; we must be bold in our approach.
“In addition to engaging a wide variety of stakeholders and potential beneficiaries in the preparation of the budget, we also adopted a unique complementation of executive and bureaucratic exigencies in the identification and pooling of priorities, the planning of resource engagement and the methodologies for achieving results.
“In the same vein, we are emphasizing partnerships such as partnership with the Legislature and Judiciary, and between the Legislature and Judiciary, partnership between the State and the Federal Government; between the State and Local Governments, partnership among MDAs, partnership with International Development Agencies, with the private sector and partnership between elected and appointed officials and relevant MDAs,” he said.
Ikpeazu said the government’s focus would remain to change the economic development template of the State, noting that the emphasis of method would be on programme linkages.
“We no longer need stand-alone visions. We need integrated approaches, policies, programmes, and projects from the various sectors will have to speak to each other and build bridges towards the wholesome repositioning of the State economy”, he stated.
