Briefing newsmen after a council meeting presided by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, the Commissioner for Economic Planning, Dr. Barry Gbe, said the council approved the proposal after due consideration of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF and FSP), in line with the Fiscal Responsibility Law 2020.
Gbe stated that his ministry had proposed a budget of N388b, but to accommodate other matters not envisaged earlier, the council jerked up the figure. Gbe, however, disclosed that the N425b budget was indicative. “So, we will be going to the House of Assembly with an indicative figure of N425b as a total budget size for 2022.
“The microeconomic indicators that informed the indicative 2022 budget was a deliberate adoption of the FF MTEF and FSP, where crude oil is to be sold at $57 per barrel in 2022, with daily production at 1.88 million barrels and exchange rate of N410 to a dollar.
He said the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for 2021 half year was N35b, which is to be scaled up through expanding the tax net to accommodate the informal sector to raise the IGR from N65b plus of 2021 to N75b in 2022.
“We also try to scale down net financing, which is to say that we don’t need to borrow much to increase the revenue side of our 2022 budget. However, in our intention to finish strong, we felt that there would be need to also maintain some figures around net financing.
“So, the revenue side of the budget for 2022 will be adequately funded through the statutory allocation, the IGR, grants from donor agencies and multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF and some others that might likely come up,” he added.
According to him, the state government will be doing a 56/44 ratio distribution between capital and recurrent expenditures to enable it finish ongoing capital projects in 2022.
