Judex Okoro, Calabar
Cross River Governor, Prof Benedict Ayade, has presented the sum of One Trillion, One Hundred Billion, One Hundred and Seven Million, Five Hundred and Seven Thousand Naira and Nine Kobo, only as the 2020 state Appropriation Bill to the Cross River House of Assembly, Thursday in Calabar.
The Appropriation Bill is christened “Budget of Olimpotic Merristamasis.”
In 2019 the state budgeted the sum of N1.04trillion.
Giving details of the budget, Professor Ayade said N911 billion, representing 82% of the estimates, will be for capital estimates while N188 billion, 17.2%, will be spent on recurrent expenditure.
He said the health sector will gulp N44 billion, N38 billion for education, N22 billion for agriculture while N85 billion will go to the New Cities Project.
He added that a number of agro-based industries under construction in the state will come on stream next year and the government hopes to earn about 380 billion naira from their activities.
On taxation, Ayade said the tax regime in the state beginning from next year will become softer as a means of boosting the income of low earners as high-income earners will be the ones who pay more tax.
He maintained that no nation taxes it’s people to prosperity and so daily taxes will be abolished for low income earners including traders and Civil servants who earn below N100,000 per month will be exempted from taxes.
According to him, “a flat monthly tax will rather be paid by low income earners and government will continue to legalise Hawking and create some Hawking bases in the state to assist low income earners.”
He said the budget looks unachievable but his administration is determined to actualize it and sought the cooperation of the legislature.
In his response, Speaker of the State Assembly, Eteng Williams, to give the necessary support saying the budget will be approved before the end of the year.