Bauchi assembly adopts Abubakar’s N196.7b budget proposal for 2019

Kano’s holds secret budget defence with MDGs
Bauchi State House of Assembly has adopted the N196,722,411,476 budget that Governor Muhammad Abubakar presented for the 2019 fiscal year.

Tagged ‘Budget of continuity’, the proposal has 60 per cent for recurrent expenditure and 40 per cent for capital projects.

Governor Abubakar said that his administration had given priority to health, agriculture, education and women empowerment to engender the needed change in the state.

While giving the details of the proposal yesterday, the governor disclosed recurrent budget as N79.196 billion (40 per cent) and capital budget as N117.52 billion (60 per cent).

According to him, the state’s internally-generated revenue (IGR) stands at N17.14 billion, while statutory allocation is N108.39 billion.

Pension and gratuity takes N10 billion of the appropriation, while N6.67 billion will be used to service public debt, he explained.

In his response, the assembly speaker, Kawuwa Damina, asked the members to sponsor the acceptance of the budget. The budget was adopted and plenary was adjourned till January 8, 2019 for further scrutiny of the document.

Meanwhile, Kano State House of Assembly Committee on Appropriation yesterday commenced 2019 budget defence with government agencies in secret.

Journalists, assembly protocol and other officials were prohibited from catching a glimpse of the closed-door defence session.

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje had on Wednesday, November 14, 2018, presented over N219 billion appropriation for the 2019 fiscal year to the state assembly for consideration.

When contacted, the director of information at the assembly, Ali Bala, contended that journalists were banned from covering budget defence at the assembly.

According to Ali, the closed-door session during budget defence is the tradition of the assembly and the general public can only be availed of the outcome of the defence after the committee had submitted their findings to assembly.

The director of Kano State Agricultural Development Agency (KNADA), Prof. Mahmud Denaji, said the agency would launch integrated water and agricultural development in 2019.

He told journalists after his budget defence that the agency’s N3.16 billion allocation would be deployed to irrigation, crops production and general agricultural processes.

Denaji revealed that government secured additional N2 billion loan from Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to finance special agricultural project.