Fayose presents N67b budget to Assembly

Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose yesterday presented 2016 appropriation bill of N67, 044,395,547,91 to the State House of Assembly for approval.

The budget proposal is 17 percent of lesser than last year’s budget of N80.78b.
governor, however, described the performance of the 2015 budget “below expectation” saying it could only achieve 70 percent performance at the end of the third quarter of the year.

The proposed budget is made up of N24.9billion capital expenditure and N42.1billion recurrent expenditure.

Fayose, who tagged next year’s fiscal proposal as “budget of reality” said last year’s budget could not achieve the desired result because of several factors including the gloomy economy, political turbulence in the first half of the year caused by the faction in the last Assembly, which he regretted impacted negatively on the revenue performance of the state.

He said the proposed budget would focus on the implementation of projects and programmes that will drive home the six cardinal programmes of his administration which are empowerment, agriculture, infrastructural development, education, science and technology, health care services and good governance.

He promised that the 2016 budget would not be financed solely by the revenue from the federation account as the state is working tirelessly to improve on its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) through exploration of natural resources and widening its tax base.

Fayose, who criticised calls for either pay cut or laying off of workers, reiterated that his administration would neither retrench nor reduce the minimum wage of N18, 000 paid to workers but rather his government would continue to implement programmes that will improve on the welfare of civil servants by ensuring prompt payment of salaries and reduce the level of poverty in the state.

In the proposed budget, the economic sector is allocated N14.1b representing 57 percent of the total budget while environmental sector gets the least allocation of N1.072b representing 4 percent of the budget.

The Speaker of the Assembly, Kola Oluwawole, assured the governor that the House would give the budget “expeditious consideration and passage.”