Governor of Oyo State, Mr. Seyi Makinde, on Monday presented an Appropriation Bill of N266,644,273,305.04 to the State’s House of Assembly for consideration as budget for the 2021 fiscal year.
The governor, during the budget presentation of the Bill tagged: “Continued Consolidation,” said the proposals in the income and expenditure components of the Bill derived from wide consultations with all stakeholders on their socio-economic needs.
Makinde, while laying the Bill before the lawmakers for consideration said: “For the 2021 Budget, our plan is to increase our annual IGR to one hundred and two billion, eight hundred and twenty-four million, two hundred and seven thousand, two hundred and thirteen Naira forty-six Kobo. (102,824,207,213.46.)
“We hope to achieve this by widening the tax net to bring in more taxpayers into the system.” “As promised, we prioritized the completion of ongoing infrastructure projects. For example, the 65km Moniya-Ijaiye-Iseyin Road, which was awarded at the time of our budget presentation last year, is already at 65% completion.
“We have also approved and started reconstructing the 21 km Airport- Ajia-New Ife Express Road with a spur to Amuloko through the Alternative Project Funding Model on Design-Build and Finance basis. Also, the now-famous Idi Ape-Basorun-Akobo- Odogbo Barracks Road, which was mismanaged by the previous contractor, has been re-awarded, and the new contractors have mobilised to the site.
” “Other ongoing road projects are the 12km Apete-Awotan-Akufo Road, the 3km Under G Stadium-LAUTECH-2nd Gate Road, 5km Gedu-Oroki-Sabo-Asipa Road, the 12.5km dualisation of Challenge-Odo Ona Elewe-Apata Road, 10km Saki Township Road dualisation”, the governor added.
Listing other capital projects of the state government and the level of implementation in the 2020 fiscal year, the governor told the lawmakers that there was still the need to undertake many more projects in order to reduce the state’s infrastructure deficit.
Makinde proposed N46, 067,695,661.13, representing 17.27% of the total budget sum for infrastructure development while Education sector is expected to gulp N56,348,375,635.55, representing 21% of the total budget.
On his administration’s efforts to beef up the state’s IGR, the government disclosed that despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the state’s economy, the government was able as at September 2020, generated over N25.6 billion in IGR.
He expatiated: “Oyo State’s IGR is presently about 32% of actual aggregate revenue. We still have not achieved a total dependence on the state income outside of federal allocation to fund the budget. Slowly, but surely, we are getting there.
“Permit me to share some of our other wins from the 2020 fiscal year. You may recall, Mr Speaker Sir, that one of the issues I highlighted that have been facing our state’s budget is underperformance. By the end of quarter one, (Q1) 2019 budget performance was 38%.
“We were determined to increase this and had set a mark of 70% performance. Honourable Members of the House, although we have not yet met up with our target, our budget performance as of now is above average at 50.32%. We accomplished this despite the economic shock induced by the pandemic.”
In his remarks, the speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon. Adebo Ogundoyin, assured that the Legislature would collaborate with the Executive arm of government and other stakeholders to achieve at least 70% budget performance for 2021.
The lawmaker said: “Let me assure that, as a House, we are always ready to perform our constitutional duty of lawmaking in particular and to also ensure that the Executive arm of Government encounters no legal impediment in the performance of its functions for the overall welfare and wellbeing of the State and its residents.”
