Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno state; has presented the N208.7 billion 2021 budget to the State House of Assembly for consideration and passage into law. According to him, the budget estimate proposals are 43% higher than this year’s budget of N146 billion. Presenting an appropriation bill on Wednesday in Maiduguri, the state capital, he said that the bill tagged: “People’s budget of recovery and consolidation,” is to be financed from recurrent and capital revenue receipts of N90.2 billion and N118.5 billion respectively. He said that the recurrent expenditure proposals stood at N72.7 billion, while capital expenditures will gulp the sum of N135.2 billion. He noted that the contingency expenditures to finance next year’s budget, is N833 million, “This budget proposal is based on the federal government’s fiscal forecast for the 2021-2023 medium term expenditures framework,” noting that the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) forecast was also adopted to reflect economic realities and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. He said that the 2021 budget, also serves as a benchmark for implementation of the state’s 25-year development plan. “Next year’s budget is of strategic importance to the course of the developing state,” he said, as the Works, Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RRR) and Education sectors were accorded top most priority. He said that their sectorial budgetary allocations are N19 billion, N16 billion and N15.76 billion in that order. While reviewing performance of the 2020 budget, he said that the low performance was attributed to over a decade long insurgency and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that affected various sectors of the economy. Speaker of the House, Abdulkarim Lawan also condemned the incessant Boko Haram attacks and killings in various communities. He assured the Governor that the 28-member Assembly will continue to support government policies and programmes that will improve the living conditions of people.
