The Akwa Ibom State Government has proposed a total budget outlay of N582.115 billion for the 2022 Financial Year as against the approved revised provision of N598.975 billion of 2021 representing a decrease from the 2021 revised budget of N16. 86 billion.
The proposed budget is made up of N260.151 billion for recurrent expenditure and ₦321.964 billion for capital expenditure.
State Governor Mr Udom Emmanuel, who presented this fiscal proposal to the state House of Assembly on Monday evening, said the 2022 budget tagged “Budget of Re-defining Standards” was prepared in accordance with the International Public Accounting standard (IPSAS) Accrual template.
He said the intention was to roll out a manageable budget size that would help in closing the gap between the budgeted figures and the actual figures.
‘In the course of preparing the year 2022 budget efficient costing tools such as Cost-Benefit Analysis, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and elasticity methods including moving averages were deployed,’ he stated.
Pausing to give a review of the 2021 budget, the governor said that as of September, the total recurrent revenue collected was N138.338 billion, representing 71% of the prorated approved provision for the period (January – September), while the sum of N207.083 billion was realised from other capital Receipts excluding recurrent surplus, representing 81% of the prorated approved provision for the period.
‘With respect to expenditure, a total of N126.263 billion was spent on Recurrent Services representing 66% of the prorated provision for the period.
“A total of N128.756 billion was spent on Capital programmes within the same period which represents 50 per cent of the prorated provision for the period. Our Capital Budget Expenditure is described in detail in the Budget Implementation Report, which has been prepared to facilitate your consideration of the Draft 2022 Budget.
‘Operating within the framework of the approved revised budget and the limits of available resources, we have been able to record remarkable achievements in our industrialisation drive, in health care delivery, aviation development, agriculture, education, road infrastructure and others etc. we have consolidated on the gains of democratic governance and expanded the frontiers of development across all sectors.’
The governor said for the sectoral allocation of the 2022 budget, Governor Emmanuel said the economic sector would take the lion share of N347.349 billion or 67%, Administration would follow with N132.565 billion or 22.8%, the social sector would gulp N89.832 billion or15.4%, law and Justice would take N10.378 billion or 1.8% while the regional sector takes N1.991 billion or 0.3%.
He said the thrust of the year 2022 budget is to address the basic economic problems such as the unemployment of graduates and the provision of other social or soft infrastructure.
‘We will tackle the unemployment situation in the state in a holistic manner. The 2022 Budget of Re-Defining Standards will again devote sufficient attention to Education, Health, Technology and Agriculture as these are the important drivers of our economy,’ the governor said.
