Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State has presented N167,215,807,500 budget for the 2020 fiscal year to the House of Assembly for scrutiny.

Mohammed, while presenting the document tagged ‘Budget of Renewal of Hope’, said the figure was lower than the N196 billion prepared for 2019 by his predecessor, Mohammad Abubakar, “not because the government does not intend to spend much, but because we want a realistic and implementable budget”.

He put recurrent expenditure at N72, 615, 392, 214 43 (per cent) and capital expenditure at N94,600,410,286 (57 per cent).

“This budget was carefully prepared to ensure that all the projects and programmes captured would most likely be implemented. The era of unrealistic and un-implementable budget is over,” he added.

The governor said he would not abandon the projects initiated by his predecessor across the state.

He announced that the capital projects he commissioned about six months ago were near completion.

Similarly, Governor Mohammed Yahaya presented a budget of N130,668,737,593.48 to the Gombe State House of Assembly.

The governor said the budget tagged ‘Budget of Change’ was prepared considering the administration’s consultation with the people at a town hall meeting involving all stakeholders in different parts of the state who made their input into the 2020 budget.

He explained that the budget is made up of N59,198,283,900 recurrent expenditure and N71,470,453,693.48 for capital projects.

According to the governor, a budget deficit of N16,606,122,593.48 is envisaged to be financed by internal and external borrowings.

In the budget estimate, the works and transport sector got the highest allocation of N19,627,048,000 while science, technology and innovation sector got the lowest allocation of N548,370,000.

Expressing his administration’s determination to deliver, Governor Yahaya said, “This is a budget of the people, by the people and for the people. And by the grace of Allah, we shall deliver on our mandate.

“The budget was prepared with the guidance of our resource forecast using the 2020-2022 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).”

Speaker of the House, Abubakar Ibrahim, assured the governor that “the ball is now in our court and we wish to assure Your Excellency that the budget will receive expeditious legislative scrutiny and passage by God’s grace.”