Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, on Tuesday presented an Appropriation Bill of N213 billion for consideration by the State’s House of Assembly as budget for 2021 fiscal year.
The fiscal proposal, christened the ‘Budget of Consolidation’, is about N46 billion more than the previous year’s budget.
Laying the Bill before the Legislature, Governor Mohammed told the legislators that the 213,914,559,428 estimates comprised N93,197,307,970 billion as recurrent expenditure, representing 44 percent of the proposed budget while N120,717,251458 billion, or 56 percent of the proposal, would be committed to capital expenditures
The Governor explained that the proposed budget was predicated on the projected earnings from the federation account as well the state government’s internally generated revenue accruals.
He projected that the budget would be financed by recurrent revenue estimates of N180 billion and capital receipts of N105 billion.
Governor Mohammed lamented that in the outgoing fiscal year, implementation of the state’s budget was hampered by sundry constraints, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which compelled the Executive review the budget downward to N129 billion in the face of dwindling revenue.
He explained: “Despite these challenges, we were able to record moderate success in the implementation of the 2020 budget. Out of the budgeted revenue, including excess crude of 61 billion, only the sum of 34 billion was realised as at 30th September 2020.
“In the same vein, value added tax revenue recorded a performance of N13 billion against the budgeted figure of N18 billion. This is a clear indication of budget performance in the midst of budget uncertainty and challenges. Independent revenue generation was also low as the sum of N13 billion was realised against the budgeted figure of N21 billion as at 30th September 2020”, the governor added.
In his remarks, the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Suleiman Abubakar, promised that the Legislature would expeditiously consider the proposed 2021 budget as provided by the law to ensure its timely passage into law.
