Delta State Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, has assented to the 2013 Appropriation Bill of N472 billion, made up of N316 billion for Capital Expenditure and N156 billion for Recurrent Expenditure.

Governor Uduaghan, while signing the Bill into law on Monday, March 04, 2013, assured that his administration will be prudent in funding projects to speed up execution of policies and programmes of government.

While pledging to dwell more on Capital Expenditure, in order to strengthen the on-going spate of infrastructure development throughout the state, he noted that, “We want to do more of capital projects and spend less on recurrent expenditure. This is a big challenge. We are setting up structures that will weed out all ghost workers. Indeed, we reduced recurrent expenditure to 37 per cent and increased capital expenditure to 67 per cent.”

Recall that the Delta State House of Assembly had increased the size of the state budget proposal of N398.31billion for the 2013 fiscal year with a whooping N74 billion.

The state House of Assembly passed the budget on Wednesday, February 06, 2013  after increasing the proposed N398,317,113,836 to N472,006,772,179.

The new budget is also higher with about N35 billion than the N437.21 billion estimated for the 2012 fiscal year.

According to the new breakdown as passed by the lawmakers, the state’s Recurrent Expenditure is now N157,603,782,607.00 at 23.4 per cent while Capital Expenditure would gulp N314,402,989,563.00 at 66 per cent increases respectively.

The new lift in the budget has however affected the sectoral breakdown of the capital expenditure estimates, as the Economic sector which originally stood at N97,052,878,380 at 31 per cent in the earlier proposal is now N103,866,023,291 with an upsurge of N24,790,594,911 representing 31.4 per cent increase.

Estimates of the Social and Environment sectors have also been hiked as the original N46,984,952,781 representing 18.62 per cent for the Social sector is now pegged at N52,683,153,540  representing 12.12 per cent, just as the Environment sector which had N50,758,764,931 at 20.11 has been reviewed upward with additional N22,853,000,000 representing 45 per cent increase.

In the recurrent expenditure estimates, the overhead costs in the same budget which earlier had N52,201,030,693 representing 35.77 per cent will now enjoy extra N11,661,888,130 representing 8.0 per cent.

The initial budget proposal of N398.31 billion for the 2013 fiscal year presented to the state legislature on November 23, 2012 by Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, had an original budget estimate of N145.94 billion or 36.64 per cent for recurrent expenditure and N252.37 billion or 63.36 per cent for capital expenditure.

The governor had explained that the 2013 budget proposal showed a decrease of N38.9 billion or 8.9 per cent when compared to the year 2012 approved budget of N437.21 billion by N38.9billion.

The Governor also on Monday, signed the Delta State Engineering Monitoring and Control Board and Delta State Multi-Door Court House Bills into law.

Speaking earlier, while presenting the Bills, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Rt. Hon (Engr.) Victor Ochei said that the House in keeping with the constitution has passed and approved the 2013 Appropriation Bill and the two other Bills sent to the Governor for his assent.

According to the Speaker “The House of Assembly has done its Job. The 2013 appropriation Bill has been deliberated on and duly passed. There is also two other bills to be signed along with it. The Delta State Engineering Monitoring and Control Board Bill and Delta State Multi-Door Court House.”