Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State yesterday presented to the State House of Assembly appropriation bill of one hundred and one billion,one hundred and fifty four million, six hundred and forty six thousand thirty naira (N101.1 billion) for 2016 fiscal year.
The bill tagged Budget of Divine Actualisation set aside N62,396,750,000.00 for capital expenditure representing 61.68 % of thebudget outlay while N38,757,896,030.00 was set aside for recurrentexpenditure being 38 % of the total estimate.
The total estimate of about N101.1b is slightly above that of 2015 which was N96.52bn.The economic sector got N36.890 billion the largest chunk, being 59 %of the estimate of which the governor said was with the basic aim oftackling challenges in the roads, water, electricity, agriculture,education, commerce and industrial sectors.
The Ministry of Works got the highest allocation within the economicsector with N25 billion, representing 67.8 %, Ministry of WaterResources, N3billion, Commerce and Industry, N2billion while otherMinistries shared N6.89 billion being 18.7% of the budget for thesector.
The social sector got a total of N10.304 billion representing 16.5 %of the capital budget with education having allocation of N5.909billion, health N2.445 billion and others N1.95 billion.Judiciary and regional (capital city, Abakaliki and environs) receivedN1.117 billion and N0.203 billion respectively.
Giving an overview of the 2015 budget Umhai noted that the pastadministration had on 30th December 2014 presented to the House her2015 appropriation bill. He explained that the then Executive did not come up to defend thebudget, a situation that dragged until he was sworn in as governor on29th May 2015.
The governor added that the development made him toreview the estimate and presented same to the 5th house of assembly on22nd June 2015.
