Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed of Bauchi State has presented the
State 2020 Appropriation Bill to the State House of Assembly with an
estimate of N167,215,807,500 naira Budgeted for Capital and Recurrent
Services.
Speaking at the occasion, Governor Bala Mohammed explained that the
amount comprised Recurrent Expenditure of N72,615,39,214 while Capital
Expenditure received the sum of N94,600,410,286.
The Governor said the sum of N102,474,311,276 was estimated as
Recurrent Revenue made up Internally Generated Revenue and Statutory
Allocation while for the Recurrent Expenditure government estimated the
sum of N72,615,397,214 comprises of Personnel Cost, Overhead Cost and
Consolidated Revenue.
The Governor said the year 2020 budget was prepared on the
Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and assured that government will
continue to use it because of its flexibility and compliance with the
State Fiscal Responsibility Law 2009.
According to him, Bauchi State since last year moved from the 26
digits to current 52 digits of the International Public Sector
Accounting Standards National Chart of Accounts making the state easy to
generate and interpret accounting results to meet Domestic and National
requirements.
Governor Bala Mohammed noted that his administration has in the
course of the preparation of the 2020 budget taken measures into
consideration to include among others, achieving a recurrent to capital
expenditure ratio, create efficiencies in personnel and overhead
expenditure to free resources for development, growth of IGR by a
minimum of at least 20 percent annum.
The Governor said the budget will pay attention to priority areas of
Health, Education, Agriculture, Youth Empowerment, Job Creation and
Community Development, Poverty reduction through the establishment of
small scale enterprises, Mining, Tourism and Cooperative development.
Other areas he said are the provision of Infrastructure through the
construction and rehabilitation of roads both urban and rural as well as
water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
Governor Bala Mohammed said the proposed budget was lower than the
previous years as it was carefully prepared in such a way that projects
and programmes captured will most likely be implemented.
On the implementation of the 2019 Budget, the Governor attributed the
low of the implementation of the budget to the change in the mantle of
leadership in the state.
He said out of the Budgeted FACC Revenue including Excess Crude of
N73,640,952,998, only one sum of N38,038,048,688 representing 51.65
percent was realized as at 30th September, 2019.
He assured that his administration will definitely not allow this
ugly situation to continue as measures will be taken to improve revenue
generation through reorganizing the State Board of Internal Revenue
Service.
The Governor while expressing gratitude to the citizens of the state
for the confidence reposed in him, described as commendable, the cordial
working relationship existing between his administration and members of
the assembly.
On his part, the Speaker, State House of Assembly, Abubakar Y
Sulaiman pledged the determination of the lawmakers towards ensuring
speedy passage of the budget.
The Proposed 2020 Budget has as its theme ” budget of renewal of hope”.