Kwara State recorded a total inflow of N30.337 billion revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019 as released by the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development. In the Report, a total sum of N13.368Bb was received from FAAC, representing the fund from Statutory Allocation, Value Added Tax(VAT), Excess Crude, Exchange Gain, Other Sundry Revenue and other Mineral Revenue.
Consequently, it was also stated that the sum of N6.640bn was realized for IGR at the fourth quarter while N8.794Bn was recorded for Grants and N1.742Bn represent LOAN from YESSO, FADAMA and other
Foreign body intervention programmes.
Capital Expenditure
Health Sector took the larger percentage of the spending in the year 2019, it recorded N8.889bn spent on various programmes and projects such as Purchase of office equipment, Health Insurance Agency Neglected Tropical Diseases, UNICEF Support Child Survival Programme, EU-SIGN, Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Saving One Million Lives Programme for Result and Global Fund Support on Malaria.
Governor’s Office took second on the spending log, it recorded N2.451Bn while Ministry of Works, took third on the spending log, it recorded N1.195Bn.
Overall Capital spent was N14.692 in the quarter.
Recurrent Expenditure
Personnel Cost (including salaries of public/political office holders), pension and gratuities recorded
N5.718Bn for three months (Oct-Dec) while debt servicing took N2.304Bn, Overhead of N8.691Bn and other CRF recorded N0.229Bn in the fourth quarter 2019.
Observation
The 2019 budget projection for the fourth quarter was unable to meet its revenue projection leaving the Capital Budget to suffer.
Recommendation
Overhead Cost took large percentage of the money spent on recurrent expenditure in the 2019, it could be
streamlined to free fund for Capital components.
•Suleiman Oladimeji, a Finance and Economy expert, writes from Abuja