From Emmanuel Adeyemi, Lokoja
Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello on Wednesday presented a budget draft of N172,090,787,292 to the members of the state House of Assembly with the objective of giving the statewide transformation.
The budget which is slightly higher than the 2022 budget is divided into Recurrent Expenditure of N 101,299,1 29,341, representing 58.86% and Capital Expenditure of N70,791,657,951, representing 41.14%.
The governor said the 2023 Budget is an instrument designed to guide government efforts to fire up the economy and keep it burning and at the same time meant to capture only realisable revenues, enhance Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and aggressively pursue repayment of debts owed
“In addition, this budget proposal is expected to help us significantly reduce the cost of governance, enhance the ease of doing business, attract more foreign direct investments, block all leakages in our finances, prioritise completion of all ongoing projects and even make room to undertake a few new ones which are too crucial to be left undone by this administration.
“It is in consideration of these and other objectives that we have tagged our 2023 Budget, THE BUDGET OF TRANSFORMATION. It focuses on the continued provision of physical infrastructure, human capital development, job creation, wealth creation and poverty eradication,” he said
This he said will be done through significant upscaling of expenditures in Health, Education, Agriculture, Water Resources, Environment, Housing and Support for Women and Youth Empowerment programmes.