Soludo Presents N170bn Revised Budget, Pledges Transparency

Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo has reiterated his administration’s resolve to critically implement transparent management of public finance, as the state embarks on execution of core projects that touch on the socioeconomic lives of the people.

Soludo made the disclosure on Thursday while presenting the 2022 revised budget of N170 billion before the Anambra State House of Assembly.

This new proposal has raised the budget from the initial N149.9 billion approved approved under the past administration of Willie Obiano.

According to Soludo, revision of the budget was considered necessary in order to reflect new realities of challenges that need to be tackled.

“The purpose of the 2022 Revised budget is to reflect current realities, challenges, and priorities of the new administration and Ndi Anambra.

“We are undaunted by the state of the treasury. We have seriously started reforming our system of tax administration to significantly ramp up our internally generated revenue over the coming years.

“In the meantime, the dire needs of Ndi Anambra and our transformation agenda cannot wait.”

The governor disclosed that they are working on adopting a mixture of options to finance the budget in order to guarantee efficient and effective service delivery to the people “while ensuring fiscal sustainability over the medium to longer terms.”

Giving a brief breakdown of the revised budget which was titled, “Taking Off from the Blocks”, the Professor of Economics stated that capital expenditure will take 64 per cent as against the previous 57 per cent, representing 33 per cent increase from N81 billion to N108 billion.

Recurrent expenditure increased marginally by 0.79% from N60 billion, he added.

He noted that the budget on security was left unchanged as they hope to raise money from “off-budget resources” such as donations to cater to that.

Governor Soludo explained that the capital expenditure is targeted at tackling infrastructural issues that have direct impact on the citizens.

“As a reflection of our Agenda, about 60% of the Capital Expenditure is targeted at delivering infrastructure that the average citizen can feel, see, use or touch and which have the highest developmental impact within the shortest possible time.”

Speaking on what was proposed for road infrastructure, the governor stated that about N52 billion representing about 31 per cent of the total budget is for the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure for rehabilitation of roads in various local government areas across the state.

Soludo equally said that his administration is continuing with the ‘Community Choose Your Project’ initiative of his predecessor, and has raised value of the community projects to N25 million per community.

He also noted that his government has budgeted for full computerization of the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General for prudent fiscal management as the state currently has over N120 billion debt to tackle especially, the contractor debt and pension liabilities, while it is only receiving a paltry sum as monthly allocation from the Federation.