GOVERNOR Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe State yesterday presented to the state House of Assembly, a budget proposal of N64.2 billion budget for the 2011 fiscal year.
He said N37bn would be injected into capital projects and N25bn into recurrent expenditure. “We will definitely cut down overhead cost in order to have more funds for people-oriented projects,” the governor said. Tagged, ‘Budget of Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation’, Gaidam said the figure represents a 1.4 per cent decrease from the N65bn budgeted in 2010. Gaidam said the state had a balance of N2.7bn in its account which would serve as the opening balance for next year, adding that a lot of achievements were recorded in all sectors of the economy in 2010.

“Last year, we have sponsored more than 500 students to the Turkish College in Nigeria and the Turkish University in Turkey, paid counterpart funds to international organizations, built houses and roads, renovated hospitals and procured over 6,000 metric tonnes of fertilizer,” Gaidam said. He said the state hopes to generate N34.8bn from the federation account, N6.7bn from Value Added Tax and N9bn from excess crude oil revenue in 2011. “We also hope to generate N3bn from locally generated revenue, N1.7bn from external loans, N6bn internal loans and N2.7bn from grants” Gaidam said.

Like what obtained last year, the Ministry of Works received the lion’s share of N12bn followed by the Ministry of Education with N7.3bn.”

Speaker Usman Adamu thanked the governor for respecting the provisions in last year’s budget and expressed appreciation with the prudent financial management. “We will ensure speedy passage of the budget to facilitate execution of projects in the people’s interest,” the speaker said.