Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, on Wednesday, announced a budget proposal of N714.4 billion for the services of Delta State Government in 2024.
The proposal shows a decrease of N94.9 billion or 12%, compared to the 2023 approved budget of N809.4 billion.
Presenting the estimates to the state house of assembly, Gov Oborevwori said the amount is made of N316.6 billion or 44% of total budget for recurrent expenditure, and N397.9 billion or 56% for capital expenditure.
According to him, the slight decrease was because the budget would be funded largely from within as the state would spend only what it could earn within the period.
The governor said the main sources of funds for the budget would be mainly from internally generated revenue, statutory allocation, mineral derivation, value-added tax and other capital receipts.
Giving details about the sources of funds, Oborevwori said IGR is expected to net over N110bn.
“The reforms we are undertaking in revenue collection, the plugging of leakages in all revenue sources, as well as the anticipated return of oil producing companies to Delta State, is expected to impact positively on our IGR in the forthcoming year.
“It is, therefore, our projection to generate the sum of N110.3 billion in internally generated revenue in 2024, representing 15% of the total projected revenues.
“The IGR estimates for 2024 are higher than the 2023 approved estimates by 5.3 billion naira or 5% increase.
He explained that using the forecast from receipts in the past few months as a guide, the sum of N507.9 billion or 71% of projected total revenue for the 2024 fiscal year is expected to come from statutory allocation adding that the amount was more than the N505.4 billion, projected for the 2023 by N2.5 billion.
On Value added tax (VAT), Oborevwori said the sum of N45.8 billion would be received as remittance in the fiscal year stressing that the N 4.8 billion or 11.56 % increase over the 2023 figure of N41.0 billion was due to the noticeable improvement in VAT administration at the federal level.
He stated that the proposal for capital receipts for the year has been scaled down from N157.9 billion in 2023 to N50.4 billion which he argued, was hinged on the overriding objective to cut down borrowing and reduce the loan burden on the State.
The sectoral breakdown of the capital expenditure estimates showed the sum of N150 billion was earmarked for Ministry of Works to execute capital projects in the fiscal year while education sector received N 46.55b billion.
Others include health sector N18.65 billion, Ministry of Agriculture N7.0 billion, Ministry of Urban Renewal and Ministry of Environment N7.5 billion and N2.1 billion respectively and Ministry of Youth Development N1.7 billion in the budget.
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