Zamfara governor proposes N130.7bn budget for 2018

The Zamfara State governor, Alhaji Abdul’Aziz Yari on Monday presented the 2018 budget proposal of N130.7 billion to the state House of Assembly for deliberation.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the proposed budget has an increase of N23b over the 2017 budget.

Presenting the budget Yari said out of the proposed amount, N46.4 billion which represents 35.5 per cent was for recurrent expenditure while N84.3 billion which represents 64.5 per cent was for Capital expenditure.

“By the end of August, the 2017 Budget performance in both revenue and expenditure stood at 57.39 per cent and this indicates that the sum of over N66.2 billion was expended from January to August, 2017.

“Within the same period under review, the recurrent expenditure to the tune of over N34.8 billion was carried out, while the capital expenditure to the tune of over N30.6 billion was also carried out,” he said.

Yari said the economic sector which consists of agriculture, livestock, forestry, manufacturing, power-supply, transport, commerce, cooperatives and finance received N33.4 billion with transport having the highest sum of N20.8 billion.

“While the social sector which included education, health, information, youth and social welfare got N21.34 billion, education receive the highest allocation of N13.32 billion followed by health with N5.1 billion.

The governor added that the environment Sector was allocated N22.1 billion to carter for water, drainages, housing, town planning and community development with town planning taking the highest allocation of N15.8 billion.

“Let me clarify that in the course of implementation of the 2018 budget, we expect refund of the monies expended by Zamfara State Government for reconstruction of Federal Roads across the state, spanning over 610 kilometres. The road projects cost the State Government a total sum of N56.97 billion,”he said.

In his remarks, the Speaker of the state assembly, Alhaji Sanusi Rikiji assured the executive arm of government of speedy passage of the bill for the proposed budget.

Rikiji said that the state assembly would continue to cooperate with the executive arm of government for the development of the state.