By Wole Mosadomi – Minna
Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger state on Thursday presented N151.2 billion budget for the 2021 fiscal year to the State House of Assembly.
Tagged “Budget of Priotise Reality” which is N151,240,621,776.00 is 2.71% lower than the original 2020 Budget of N155,459,814,701.00.
The Governor who was represented by his Deputy, Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed Ketso said “the 2021 proposed budget estimate is made up of N72,503,201,830.88 representing 47.94% as Recurrent Estimate and N78,737,419,945.12 representing 52.06% of the budget size as Capital Estimates.
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He said the Budget is to be financed through the usual traditional sources of Statutory Allocation from Federation Account, Value Added Tax, Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), and Capital Receipts.
Furthermore, he said “out of the N151,240,621,776.00 Proposed Budget, N71,955,049,902.00 or 47.58% is expected to accrue from the Federation Account, N17, 999,524,715.00 representing 11.91% from Value-Added Tax, while N14,744,770,399.00 or 9.74% is to be generated internally.
According to him,”the sum of N42,201,250,249.00 representing 27.90% of the budget is expected as Capital Receipt from Development Partners, Grants, Loans among others.
“Other expected revenue sources include: Dividends from North-South Power N500,000,000.00, Refund from National Electricity Liability Company (NELCO) N3,510,026,517.00 and Refund from Federal Roads N330,000,000.00 which account for 0.33%, 2.32% and 0.22% respectively.”
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A breakdown of the budget shows that the Economic Sector has the highest allocation of N54.257billion or 68.90%, followed by the Social Sector with N16.084Billion or 20.42% and Administrative Sector with 9.02% or N7.095billion. The Law and Justice Sector have a proposed estimate of N1.3Billion.
Governor Bello however lamented that the year 2020 has been tough on almost all fronts saying, the outbreak of COVID-19 to the most recent protest that engulfed the nation with its attendant catastrophe has affected almost all governments in all the nations of the World including Niger state he added.
In his remarks, Speaker of the state House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Abdullahi Bawa Wuse assured that the lawmakers will ensure that the Budget is scrutinized and given speedy passage and that it will also partner with the Executive arm and security agencies in ensuring that the insecurity challenges faced is tackled.
