Bauchi Govt. presents N196.72bn budget for 2019

Gov. Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi State on Thursday presented N196.72 billion budget for the 2019 fiscal year to the state’s House of Assembly.

Abubakar, while presenting the appropriation bill tagged “budget of Continuity”,  said that N79.19 billion, representing 40 per cent, was for recurrent expenditure.

He also said that N117.52 billion, representing 60 per cent, was for capital expenditure.

He said that Health, Education, Agriculture, Water Supply, Youth and Women Empowerment and Infrastructure Development sectors  would be given priorities in 2019.

According to him, the 2019 budget is based on the benchmark of $60 dollars per barrel from the projection of 2.3 million barrels of oil per day.

He added that this was also based on an exchange rate of N305 to one dollar, as well as a robust and efficient system of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) collection.

The governor said that the state government deliberately allocated ratio 40:60  of the budget to recurrent and capital expenditures to ensure development.

He said that attention would be given to the completion of ongoing capital projects and commencement of new ones that were crucial.

Abubakar said the recurrent revenue estimate  of N17.14 billion would  be generated from IGR and N108.39 billion as statutory allocation.

He noted that the recurrent revenue estimates comprised of N35.3 billion as personal cost and N26.39 billion as overhead cost.

The governor said that N17.48 billion for consolidated revenue fund charges was made up of N10 billion for pension and gratuity; N6.67 billion as public debt charges/debt servicing while N815.63 billion would be for the public servants’ salaries.

He said the government projected that the state would realise N71.18 billion from capital receipts, N550 billion as opening balance and N10.38 billion from internal loans.

He said that other capital receipts were N26 billion for external loans, N20.71 billion for aids and grants, and N13.53 billion for other capital receipts.

Under capital expenditure, he said that N10.57 billion was for administrative sector and N57.35 billion for economic sector.

He said that N41.75 billion would be for the social sector, N5.5 million to regional sector, while N2.32 million was for the law and justice sector respectively.

“We had purchased 1,000 units of power tillers, 500 units of tractors to further expand the agriculture sector.

“This is, especially, to empower the small scale farmers through Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme Loans and rehabilitated three model farm training centres in the state,” he said.

He added that the state’s Ministry of Finance would give a breakdown of the entire budget and other policy guidelines of the government.

The governor urged the people of the state to support government policies and programmes to enable the state move forward.