Gov Alia presents N550bn 2025 budget estimate to Benue Assembly

Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, has presented a budget estimate of N550 billion for the 2025 fiscal year to the state assembly.

During the presentation on Wednesday, the governor stated that this proposed budget reflects a 47.5% increase over the revised and approved budget for 2024.

The budget is themed ‘Budget of Human Capital Development, Food Security, and Digital Economy.’

Governor Alia emphasized that his administration aims to operate within its recurring revenue limits to achieve the state’s aspirations while avoiding unnecessary debt for future generations.

According to the governor, “Mr Speaker, Honourable Members, the intention of the government is to stay within the limits of its recurring revenue to build the Benue of our dreams, without accruing unnecessary debts for generations unborn.

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“This explains why Benue State is among the few states in the country that are offsetting the indebtedness, paying salaries and meeting other financial and infrastructure commitments without recourse to borrowing.

“However, since the 2025 budget is a deficit one, it proposes a borrowing plan of a conservative sum of Twenty-Six Billion, and Fifty-Three Million, Nine Hundred and Fifty-Three Thousand, Seven Hundred and Thirty-Six Naira Thirty-Two Kobo only (N26,053,953,736.32K).

“This represents a modest 4.7% of the proposed aggregate expenditure for 2025. This is lower than the State’s Debt-to-GDP ratio of 8.2% which is within the benchmark of the 25% debt sustainability threshold.

The budget proposed the sum of over N174 billion as current expenditure to sustain the minimum wage payments and other incidental costs associated with overheads while the proposed capital expenditure stands at N375 billion which represents 71.5% increase over the 2024 Revised Budget.

The sectoral breakdown of expenditure estimates are listed as follows: Education & Knowledge Management to gulp about N83 billion, Health & Human Services about N83 billion, Agriculture & Food Security N84 billion, Law and Justice about N27 billion, Security about N47 billion, Infrastructure, N110 billion and Social Welfare, N5 billion.

Others are: Commerce about N59 billion, Digital Economy about N19 billion and others about N35 billion.

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