THE Anambra State Governor, Willie Obiano on Thursday, presented before the members of the state House of Assembly a draft budget of N157.1billion for the 2019 fiscal year.
Obiano said the 2019 budget entitled “Budget for Sustained Economic Growth and Youth Empowerment” would create jobs for the teeming youths and also boost the state’s economy.
He said youths empowerment was number one in his 2019 fiscal year with a view to ensuring that Anambra tackled unemployment, underemployment and more importantly, provide a means of livelihood for the poor and vulnerable in the society.
The governor told the lawmakers that the budget size represented a 41.3 per cent for recurrent expenditures and 58.7 per cent for Capital Expenditures.
He said the estimate illustrates his administration’s resolve to continue to deliver the dividends of good governance to the people of the state.
The governor, while analysing the budget, said the Sustained Economic Growth and Youths Empowerment entail that the state would “carefully assess all activities and make difficult trade-offs to ensure we focus solely on implementing projects and programs that provide infrastructural growth in the state.”
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On ‘Economic Diversification’ Obiano added that his administration would ensure that Anambra attains fiscal independence over the next five years through her internally generated revenues, which he believed should cover “recurrent expenditure with the balance to support capital interventions. We hope to aggressively embark on public finance reforms to optimise and strengthen our tax administration processes.”
“Strategic Collaborations: Fourthly, we hope to develop stronger ties with the Federal Government MDAs and key development partners (such as the World Bank, European Union, United Nations System, etc.) to jointly intervene in social investments, works & infrastructure, education, healthcare and environment sectors of our economy. To achieve this, we have aligned this budget to the National Economic Recovery & Growth Plan and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.
“Public-Private-Partnerships: And finally, our fifth target outcome will be to strengthen and refocus our investment climate by channelling significant resources towards providing infrastructures and reducing the bureaucratic bottlenecks involved in starting and running businesses in Anambra State.
A breakdown showed that the state expects to spend N65.33bn on recurrent expenditure and N91.8bn on capital expenditure to drive out policy thrusts of sustaining economic growth and youth empowerment.
It also shows N22.4bn would be spent on construction of rural/community roads across the state and N1.5bn for Anambra Road Maintenance Agency for rehabilitation and installation of traffic lights on strategic roads, N3.0bn for State-owned Universities/Colleges and Polytechnics in the state.
Other sectors of the state economy also got significant budget proposals from the estimate.
The state also budgeted N2.8bn for Community Social Development Program and others.
The governor scored himself high on the implementation of the budget of the passing year, saying that he was able to meet the budget proposal and promised to do better in the coming years.
Earlier commending the governor, the Speaker Anambra State House of Assembly, Mrs Rita Maduagwu said that a good number of items budgeted for in 2019 running estimate was accomplished, and promised to give accelerating hearing on it to fast-track its passage.
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