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”.