The Kwara State House of Assembly has today approved N130,380,403,956 as the new revised total budget size of the State as against the initial N157,802,032,561 with a decrease of N27,421,628,605, representing 17.4 per cent.
This is coming after the report of the House Committee on Finance and Appropriation on the Year 2019 Revised Appropriation Bill submitted to the House by the Chairman of the Committee Hon Ambali Olatunji Ibrahim.
The Committee trimmed the budget after a meticulous review of the 2019 Budget of the Kwara State Government.
According to the Chairman of the Committee, the abatement of the budget size is pertinent in order to enable kwara State leverage of benefitting outrightly from the benefit obtainable by the state from “The State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability Program for Result (SFTAS)open to all states with high/appreciable Budget implementation/performance, accountability, transparency and sustainability of their Budgets”.
A statistical analysis indicates that the total revenue estimate of the 2019 budget now stands at N130,380,403,956 down from N157,802,032,561, while the Approved Budget Surplus of N43, 638,537,362 was resize to N27,187,810,159, a decrease of N16,450,737,203, representing 37.70 per cent.
On the Capital Receipts, the House revised the capital allocation to N57,117,155,413 as against N79,594,046,011, a decrease of 22,476,890,598.
However, considering time constraints, a term loan of about N1.67bn was granted as against the initial N6.221bn proposed by the Governor of Kwara State, Mallam Abdulrahman Abdurazaq.
The Speaker of the House, Rt Hon Yakubu Danladi Salihu, in his speech, eulogised the House Committee on Finance and Appropriation for conducting a thorough work on the budget revision.
The speaker, however instructed the Clerk of the House, Hajia Halimah Jummai Kperogi to present a copy to the State Governor for assent.
