Umahi presents N123b 2021 budget

Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State has presented to the state Assembly, a budget estimate of N122,852,045,22.49 for 2021 fiscal year.

The appropriation bill which is expected to have its major revenue from the federal allocation while other revenue heads are expected to come from sale of international market stores, land proceeds, malls and other receipts.

“Our major revenue is expected to come from federation account estimated at about N52bn or 42.33% of the budget. Other revenue heads like IGR, sales of international market stores, land proceeds, sales of malls, other receipts etc will account for the balance of N57.994bn or 47.53% of total budget. We are projecting to increase our IGR from projected N10,569,074,353.56 in 2020 budget to N12,858,297,657.83 or 10.47% of our total expected revenue”.

“In 2020, our projected actual revenue receipts by December 31, 2020 is N122,138,799,059.13 which is 92.53% performance. We are therefore staying on side of what is possible by our 2021 budget of N122,852,045,222.49 which is just 0.6% higher than our projected 2020 budget performance”, the governor stated.

In the budget breakdown, human capital development and empowerment will gulp N3,259,779,838.94 or 2.65% of the total budget. The amount was intended to deploy N3bn as ENDSARS empowerment programme for youths and women.

The governor said that the programme has commenced with collation of names and their proposals of their choices of businesses, adding that he intends to reach out to about 250 persons with best proposals per Local Government Area with N1m per person.

The Ministry of Health and health related programmes got the sum of N18,706,279,929.28 or 15.23% of the total budget.

The education sector got the total amount of N23,913,778,152.08, while the Ministry of Works and Transport got the budget of N9,206,693,563.56 or 7.49% of the total budget.

Umahi noted that the budget was intended to complete all on-going projects before starting new ones.
He said: “Under the Ministry of Infrastructures for Concession, we were developing the airport and few other infrastructures.

We have opened bids for the airport equipment and we hope to mobilize the contractor this December. Other major works of the airport that will be completed in 2021 include the earth works, parks, terminal building, and concrete works of the 4km by 65m of the runway. We hope to open the airport for business latest by June 2022. The budget here is therefore N14,012,217,549.64 or 11.41% of the total budget”.