Makinde signs revised budget of N174bn into law

Gov Seyi Makinde of Oyo State on Wednesday signed the state’s revised budget of N174 billion for 2020 into law.The governor appended his signature on the document at a brief ceremony held at the Government House, Agodi in Ibadan.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the reviewed budget was passed by the State House of Assembly for assent on July 28.

The executive arm of government had proposed N169 billion from the initial N213 billion, but the state lawmakers increased the budget to N174 billion.

Makinde said the review of the budget was necessitated by the economic realities of the country occasioned by the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is the second time in just about a year that we are going to review the state budget downward.

“The reason for this latest review is apparent to us all, the economic meltdown we are experiencing, occasioned by the crash in oil price coupled with COVID-19 pandemic, has greatly affected our state ability to stick with the original budget,” he said.

He said that the state government had always presented robust budgets, but funds were not available to implement them.

“This is part of the reason we keep having stagnation in the economic growth.

“Oyo state is built as a civil service state because we have not taken the needed action to boost the economy.

“However, our administration has put some steps in place to ensure that the 2020 budget is adequately funded.

“We are targeting 70 per cent budget implementation based on the planned measures that have been put in place,” the governor said.

Makinde said that any loan taken would be strictly spent on priority capital projects for the betterment of the state.

“So, this revised budget includes N65.2 billion for capital projects while N108 billion is for recurrent expenditure.

“We plan to pay a huge trunk of our recurrent expenditure through our allocation from the federation account plus our internally generated revenue,” Makinde said.

The governor thanked the Speaker and all members of the Assembly for the timely passage of the revised budget.