Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State has expressed his willingness to depart from the practice of expending a huge percentage of budgetary allocations on recurrent expenditure.
Akeredolu who made this known while signing the 2017 Appropriation Bill into law at the Governor’s Office in Akure stated that the huge deficit in various sectors in the state needed to be tackled hence the administration efforts to reduce the embarrassing imbalance between recurrent and capital expenditure.
The budget totals N170.85 billion.
According to the Governor,” This bill has a provision of N170, 846, 580 billion broken into debt service (principal) N8.127 billion, statutory transfers N8.374 billion, recurrent expenditure N95.159 billion and capital expenditure N59.187 billion.
“These fiscal estimates have been scrutinized meticulously to capture the aspirations of this administration on real development. It is important to state that the government has initiated special intervention strategies on agriculture, job creation, infrastructure, education, technology and rural development”.
Expressing his resolve to improve fiscal circumstances substantially through revenue generation, Akeredolu said,” This administration is not unmindful of the dire challenges faced by it with regards to Budget implementation, mainly due to the paucity of funds.
“We are, however, determined to improve our fiscal circumstances substantially, through revenue generation. We shall devise means of plugging loopholes exploited by unscrupulous elements to deny the State of deserved revenue.
“We shall expand our tax base aggressively. This administration requires the cooperation of all concerned in ensuring that all revenues accruable to the State are realized with minimal stress”.
He thanked members of the State House of Assembly for promptly scrutinizing and passing the 2017 Appropriation Bill.
Earlier, the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. David Oleyelogun, appreciated members of the House for their cooperation and commitment towards making the budget a reality.
The Speaker noted that the Governor sent the appropriation of N169, 720, 580 000.00 to the House saying that after a thorough job was done on the appropriation bill, some additions and subtractions were made in certain areas, after which the difference of N1,126,000,000 occurred to take care of tertiary institutions in the state.
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