The Governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar, has presented a N168 billion 2018 Appropriation Bill to the state House of Assembly.
The document tagged “Budget of Consolidation,” comprises of Recurrent Expenditure of N69 billion or 41% while Capital Expenditure receives the sum of N100 billion or 59%, on the priority areas of Health, Education, Agriculture, Water Supply, Youth and Women Empowerment and Infrastructural Development.
The highlights of the budget were given in a statement issued by the Press Secretary to Governor Mohammed Abubakar, Abubakar Al-Sadique.
According to him, the governor said the 2018 Budget was predicated on the assumptions of an oil production of 2.3million barrels per day; a bench mark oil price of US$45.00 per barrel; an exchange rate of N305 to US dollar and a robust and efficient system of internally generated revenue collection.
He said government had in the course of the preparation of the 2018 Budget considered achieving a recurrent to capital expenditure ratio of between 40:60; creating efficiencies in personnel and overhead expenditure to allow greater resource for capital development; growing IGR by a minimum of at least 20% per annum and allowing 4% of revenue (CRF) for contingency reserve; while using loans for capital expenditure projects.
The governor said the budget targets long term funding of all recurrent expenditure through revenue of a recurrent nature (IGR, VAT and Non-mineral component of Statutory Allocation) and all other sources of capital receipts and financing outside of loans (e.g. Aids and Grants, Private Public Partnership etc.).
He said priority attention would be accorded to completion of on-going capital projects and commencement of new projects that are crucial and necessary.
He said it would also make sure that projections for revenue items, especially from the federation account were conservatively arrived at from the arrays of forecasting options, and to reflect real economic status of the state.
He said that the five-point health agenda aimed at restructuring the sector, establishment of a State Health Care Insurance Agency and the provision of 1% of the entire State Consolidated Revenue Fund for Basic Health Care delivery were clear manifestation of the administration’s endeavour in tackling healthcare delivery problems in the state.
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Furthermore, he said, the government would continue to honour obligations through the payment of the required funds, implement the National policy guideline for primary health care under one roof as well as the allocation of over 15% of our budget to the sector.
He said with the success recorded so far, his administration would continue to place more emphasis on the rehabilitation of primary and secondary schools as well as the tertiary institutions.
According to him, upgrading some courses in the institutions of higher learning to a degree awarding status by both the University of Maiduguri and ATBU would further expose the institutions to higher student’s intake, thereby overstretching the existing infrastructures.
He said accordingly, government would invest heavily in the provision of conducive learning environment, construction of additional structures as well as increasing the manpower capacity.
Training and retraining, he said, were the key ingredients in uplifting the quality of teaching thereby impacting positively on the students through competitive results and sound moral character.
The governor said it was the desire and commitment of the administration to fight poverty and provide employment for the teaming population of the state to accord attention to the agricultural sector in 2018 Budget.
The objective is to ensure availability of enough agricultural produce for both subsistence and commercial purposes. Further to this, the administration believes that it will have a multiplier effect in creating jobs and wealth.
He said in order to realise the dream, government had decided to take to purchase 1,000 units of power tillers, facilitate the empowerment of small scale farmers through Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme Loan from CBN, rehabilitate 3 model farm training centres in the state, implement the Accelerated Agricultural Development Scheme Project that would empower about 10,000 youths across the State through the acquisition of N1.5bn loan from CBN, establish farm produce processing products clusters that comprises all related activities for quality improvement, marketing, training and other skill acquisition programmes.
