By Mumini AbdulKareem
The Kwara State House of Assembly on Wednesday approved the sum of N130,380,403,956 as the revised total budget of the State.
The new budget size with a decreased of N27,421,628,605, representing 17.4 per cent was a further reduction of the initial N135,159,772,167 billion presented to the House by Gov Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq in September as against the N157,802,032,561 approved by the last administration for 2019.
The House passed the budget after considering a report of its Committee on Finance and Appropriation.
The Chairman of the Committee, Hon Ibrahim Olatunji Ambali while presenting the report explained that concerned Ministries, Departments and Agencies were invited for stakeholders meeting before arriving at the figure, adding that the Committee trimmed the budget after a meticulous review of the 2019 budget of the state government.
According to the Chairman of the Committee, the reduction of the budget size was done in order to enable the state leverage from the benefit obtainable from the “State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability Program for Result (SFTAS) open to all states with high/appreciable Budget implementation/performance, accountability, transparency and sustainability of their Budgets”.
A further statistical analysis of the budget indicates that the approved budget surplus of N43, 638,537,362 was resize to N27,187,810,159, a decrease of N16,450,737,203, representing 37.70 per cent.
Recurrent Expenditure of the approved estimate of N78,207,986,550 was revised down to N73,263,248,543, a decrease of N4,994,738,007 representing 6.32% while the approved 2019 capital allocation of N79,594,046,011 was revised down to N57, 117,155,413, a decrease of N22,476,890,598 representing 28.24%.
But in view of time constraints, a term loan of about N1.67bn was granted as against the initial N6.221bn proposed by the Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq.
The motion for the third reading and passage of the revised supplementary budget was moved by the House Leader. Hon Olawoyin Abubakar-Magaji
Speaker, Hon Danladi Yakubu-Salihu said status quo was maintained in the budget of some critical sectors like Education and Works among others and praised the House Committee on Finance and Appropriation for conducting a thorough work on the budget revision.
The Speaker later instructed the Clerk of the House, Hajia Halimah Jummai Kperogi to prepare a clean copy of the bill to the State Governor for assent.
