By Sunday Iduh
Benue State Governor, #Samuel Ortom has presented a proposed budget of 132,592, 041,310 for 2021 fiscal year to the State House of Assembly for approval
The budget according to the Governor was made up of 41,781,089,561 billion naira for Capital Expenditure and 90,810,951,749 billion naira for Recurrent Expenditure
He said that recurrent expenditure constituted 68% of the budget while 32% represented capital expenditure, adding that the recurrent expenditure is made up of 37% (49,338,215,266 billion) personnel cost and 31% ( 41,472,736,484 billion) as over head cost
The 2021 budget christened ‘budget of resilience’ is 23.7 billion naira higher than the 108.8 billion naira revised approved budget of 2020
The Governor disclosed that the 2021 budget “focused on programmes and projects that will further strengthen the resilience and recovery of our people in the face of the manifold challenges we have already noted. We need to recover as quickly as possible from the disruptive impact of the economic downturn and the COVID-19 pandemic in order to keep our State on the path to becoming an economically self-reliant federating unit of Nigeria.
For that, we need to focus on measures that will enhance our economic recovery and growth.
“We must support our hardworking farmers and micro, small and medium enterprises to recover and rebuild their operations. We have to find innovative ways to support struggling households and individuals to survive and to thrive. We need to create opportunities for jobs and wealth creation for our teeming population of young men and women and to ensure that they have the education and skills to seize these opportunities,” he said
According to him, N51,380,902,302 is allocated to the economic sector while N33,846,563,092 is allocated to the administration sector; the social sector got N44,523,554,164 with Law and Justice getting N2,841,021,752
Governor Ortom presents 132.5bn 2021 budget to Benue Assembly
