The Zamfara State House of Assembly has drastically reduced the 2021 budget presented to the House by Governor Bello Matawalle due to low Internally Generated Revenue caused by the insecurity situation in the state.
In a statement, the Director-General, Press Affairs and Public Relations of the House, Mustafa Kaura said, the budget was trimmed down from the initial N126.7billion to N117. 5billion.
Kaura said, “In its resumed plenary, the House has carefully considered and studied a well comprehensive report from its committee on finance and appropriation that was saddled with the responsibility of revising the 2021 budget estimate as required by the executive last week.
“The Acting Chairman of the committee, Hon Shamsudeen Mafara said after due consideration of all the facts available, his committee was left with no option but to take the most dignifying steps of further trimming down the budget from the initial figure of N126,775 000.00 to N117,575,400,000,00.”
According to Hon Mafara, “The insecurity situation in the state has culminated into the poor performance of the Internally Generated Revenue. Also, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic had adversely affected the state and country, in general, this also affected negatively both the performance of capital expenditure which stood at only 32.8% as well as a recurrent expenditure with the dismal performance of only 27.6% respectively.”
He further explained that going by the fact available to his committee and after due consultations with relevant stakeholders from finance and budget ministries as well as the Board of Internal Revenue of the state government, the decision to further trim down the budget by over N25 billion was considered not only to be the best but the last and final option.
He finally solicited the support and corporation of his colleagues to agree and give the report a third and final reading which contained the sum of N117,575,400,000,00 as the real 2021 budget estimate for the year ending.
Punch
