Delta exco approves N389 billion budget proposal for 2020

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa is billed to present the budget to members of of the state House of Assembly early next month for consideration and subsequent passage.

The proposed budget size has N217 as capital expenditure and N171 billion as recurrent expenditure.

Speaking to Government House reporters at the end of the meeting in Asaba, Commissioner for Economic Planning, Barry Pere Gbe said the proposed budget is lower than that of 2019 by N1 billion.

Flanked by his Information counterpart, Charles Aniagwu, Gbe explained that the macro economic framework that gave birth to the 2019 budget is similar to that if the 2020 proposal, adding that the earlier prepared fiscal strategy paper for the state was re-adjusted to reflect what transpired at the national level.

He said: “But we also have to rely on what happened at the federal level which used an indicating figure of $57 per barrel. As a result, we changed what we had in the fiscal strategy paper to $57 per barrel.

“We had to re-adjust our assumptions to capture what transpired at the federal level. That was what gave birth to the movement from the N350 billion that we initially submitted to arriving at N389 billion which got the approval of exco.

“The capital is N217 billion and the recurrent is N171 billion. This indicates that we will do more projects than spending on operational expenditure. Personnel cost moved up because we are expecting that by 2020, we would have started implementing the new minimum wage.”