Lagos assembly passes N813bn 2017 budget

THE Lagos State House of Assembly has approved the N812.99 billion 2017 budget proposal by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.

The House passed the sum of N305,28 billion as total recurrent expenditure and N507.82 billion as total capital expenditure for the year.

It will be recalled that Ambode had, on November 29, 2016, presented an Appropriation Bill of N812.99 billion to the lawmakers for approval, while the House had, on December 1, 2016, after receiving the budget, directed all its standing committees to invite all ministries, departments and agencies to defend their budgets

Tuesday’s passage followed the House’s adoption of the report and recommendations by its Committee on Budget and Economic Planning, presented by the Chairman of the Committee, Honourable Rotimi Olowo.

Olowo said that the state was able to achieve 71 per cent budget performance in spite of the economic recession in the country.

The lawmaker said that the state would embark on progressive taxation which would bring more people into the tax net and make the rich pay more.

As part of the committee’s recommendations, the lawmaker said there was a need to comply with the Appropriation (Amendment) (Re-ordering) Law, 2016, to release funds to relevant MDAs.

The lawmaker added that there was the need for the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget to carry out budget review of 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) of MDAs before allocating envelopes for 2018 proposed budget estimate.

The House approved an expected revenues of N650 million and N350 to be generated by Education and Agriculture, respectively, while the Capital Expenditure of LASIEC was increased from N2.5 billion to N3 billion to cater for election matters.

Meanwhile, overhead for security/emergency Interventions was reduced from N500 million to N400 million and N1 billion was allocated as capital expenditure for the Ministry of Special Duties and Inter Governmental Relations.

The assembly approved a sum of N20.43 billion for LAMATA, N2 billion for ferry services, N4 billion for maintenance/repair of roads (recurrent) while the capital vote for road maintenance rose from N790.10 million to N1.79 billion.

Meanwhile, overhead cost of Lagos State House of Assembly Service Commission was increased from N210 million to N252 million.

The assembly also approved N10 billion for the State Infrastructure Intervention Fund, while it approved N159.55 million for state Electricity Board.

The Speaker, Mr Mudashiru Obasa, after taking voice vote on each  sectoral allocation of the appropriation bills and approval given to each, subsequently passed the budget.

He directed the acting clerk of the House, Mr Azeez Sanni, to duly write a letter notifying the state governor of the passage.