Lucky Aiyedatiwa, the acting governor of Ondo State, has presented a N384.5 billion appropriation bill for the 2024 fiscal year to the state House of Assembly.
The appropriation bill christened ‘Budget of Economic Resilience’ was presented by Aiyedatiwa to the House on Thursday in Akure, the state capital.
Daily Trust reports that the bill is made up of recurrent expenditure of N172.5 billion and capital expenditure of N212.1 billion.
A breakdown of the budget showed that the infrastructure development, public finance, education, agriculture development and general administration received the largest allocation.
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Speaking on the appropriation bill, the acting governor said the budget proposal would take care of overhead cost at N42 billion, capital expenditure at N211 billion, grants and contributions at N14 billion while debt servicing would gulp N16 billion.
Aiyedatiwa said the 2024 budget proposal was prepared on the projection of the 2024-2026 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as required by the Ondo State Fiscal Responsibility Law of 2017.
He noted that time had passed when the executive would sit in an office and come up with a budget document without inputs from those the budget was meant to serve, especially the stakeholders in the 18 Local Government Areas of the state.
He said, “The current national and global economic realities point to reason why we must consciously and programmatically re-arrange our fiscal priorities to target the growth drivers of our economy so as to quickly fix and reflate the economy, to keep it afloat.
“We are aware of the negative impacts of fuel subsidy removal and floating exchange rate on the people. All these are put into consideration while projecting for expenditure in this Budget.
“We have made a reasonable increase in the Personnel Estimates to cover the imminent wage increase for workers. We will also continue to roll out palliative measures to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy removal.
“The impact of climate change is another issue we have resolved to tackle headlong in the coming year. As we all noticed, the duration and intensity of rainfall relatively increased this year and produced huge run-offs and flooding in many of Local Government Areas.”
Remarking, the Assembly Speaker, Olamide Oladiji pledged the commitment of the state lawmakers to give the 2024 budget a swift approval.
Oladiji, who commended the executive for the presentation of the appropriation bill, assured that assured the residents of the state that their interest would be of paramount consideration in the course of the budget passage.
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