Aregbesola presents N150.7bn budget to Assembly

Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola has presented the 2016 budget of N150.7 billion to the State House of Assembly for consideration.

The budget was presented yesterday on behalf of the governor by the Permanent Secretary, Budget and Economic Planning, Mr Segun Olorunsogo at the plenary of the Assembly.

The proposed budget size is less by 25.3 per cent than the 2015 budget, which stood at N201.7 billion.

The draft had the recurrent expenditure of N82, 744,396,580.00 representing 54.9 per cent and capital expenditure of N67, 983,848,960.00, representing 45.1 per cent, while it has the recurrent revenue of N113, 185,677,170.00 and capital receipt of
N37, 542,568,370.00.

In a letter read by the Deputy Speaker, Akintunde Adegboye who presided over the plenary notifying the Assembly on his approval for the presentation of the budget, the governor said the proposed budget reflected the economic realities of the state and Nigeria in general.

He said the economic situation prevented the state from effective implementation of the 2015 budget, saying this would compel the state to be more pragmatic in its revenue drive as the present situation could not cater for the revenue plan of the state.

The governor urged the Assembly not to give consideration to any Ministry, Department and Agencies of government towards increasing the proposed budget figure due to dwindling revenue available to the state.

He said his call to refuse budgetary inflation by the MDAs was due to the fact that the budget has already been over stretched.

Shortly after presenting the budget, Olorunsogo said the focal point of the budget was on the completion of the on-going projects embarked upon by the government.
T
o ensure high level of implementation and performance of the budget, he said the Assembly would ensure non-reliance on the revenue from the Federation Account.

Olorunsogo also said the state would renew its aggression in the collection of IGR, especially, the revenue collectable from the Ministries, Department and Agencies [MDAs] as well as the informal sectors of the economy.

He added that the government would set up an all-inclusive Revenue Monitoring Committee towards offering continuous direction at ensuring improvement in revenue collection and blockage of loopholes.