Bello presents 2021 budget to Assembly

TRACKING____Niger State Governor Abubakar Sani Bello has presented an estimate of N151,240,621,776.00 for the 2021 budget.

The 2021 budget is titled ‘Budget of Prioritised Realities’.

The governor, represented by his deputy, Alhaji Ahmed Ketso, presented the budget to the House of Assembly.

The proposed 2021 budget, which is estimated at N151,240,621,776.00, is 2.71 per cent lower than the original 2020 budget of N155, 459,814,701.

The 2021 proposed budget estimate is made up of N72,503,201,830, representing 47.94 per cent as recurrent estimate and N78,737,419,945, representing 52.06 per cent of the budget size as capital estimate.

The deputy governor said the 2021 budget proposal is arrived at against the background of lessons learnt in the outgoing year 2020, adding that the proposal is as realistic as possible.

According to Ketso, the budget is to be financed through the usual traditional sources of Statutory Allocation from the Federation Account, Value Added Tax, Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and Capital Receipts.

“Out of the N151,240,621,776 proposed budget, N71,955,049,902.00 or 47.58 per cent is expected to accrue from the Federation Account, N17, 999,524,715 representing 11.91per cent from Value-Added Tax, while N14,744,770,399.00 or 9.74 per cent is to be generated internally.

“The sum of N42,201,250,249 representing 27.90 per cent of the budget is expected as Capital Receipt from Development Partners, Grants, Loans among others.

“Other expected revenue sources include dividends from North-South Power N500,000,000.00, refund from National Electricity Liability Company (NELCO) N3,510,026,517.00 and refund from federal roads N330,000,000.00, which accounts for 0.33 per cent, 2.32 per cent and 0.22 per cent.”

The deputy governor further said the 2021 proposed recurrent expenditure is put at N72,503,201,830, which is 3.63 per cent slightly higher than the 2020 original budget.

For the recurrent expenditure, personnel cost will gulp N38,277,834,620, leave grant will take N2,015,869,500, overhead cost is N16,089,500,000, while consolidated funds charge is N16,119,998,128 .

He said increment in the personnel and overhead costs is as a result of the implementation of N30, 000.00 new minimum wage and the backlog of promotions, annual salary increments and payment of pension and gratuity entitlements to retired civil servants, who have meritoriously served the state.