Anambra State, Governor Willie Obiano, on Thursday presented a budget of N166, 914,489,147 for service in the 2018 fiscal year, a 43 percent increase in last year’s budget.
Tagged, ‘‘Budget of Value for Money, Economic Diversification and Job Creation”, the budget is anchored on five thrusts: Value-for-Money such that it is expected that during the implementation difficult trade-offs will be carried out to ensure focus solely on implementing projects and programmes that provide commensurate value to Anambra people.
Other thrusts are Economic Diversification, Job Creation, Strategic Collaborations and Public-Private-Partnerships.
The outcome of the fifth thrust, the governor said, targets at strengthening and refocusing the Public-Private-Partnership Strategy which resources will be channeled towards targeted promotional processes to attract large scale export-driven investments across key economic pillars in the state.
The budget is capital expenditure based with N103.03 billion devoted to capital expenditure. Obiano also said that such highlights the significant infrastructural development expected in 2018, leveraging on the successful stability in the domestic economy during the challenging periods in 2016/2017.
He added: “This budget is the first meaningful step towards consolidation of our previous performance to transform Anambra into a hub for business and investments as well as the poster-boy for inclusiveness and sustainable development in Nigeria”.
The budget allocated N63.8 billion to recurrent expenditure.
The sectoral breakdown shows that Roads and Infrastructure got the lion’s share of N27.93 billion of which Road construction and rehabilitation will gulp N25.7 billion, completing approximately 150km of roads across the state., the agricultural and related sector got N3.8 b to the Agricultural Sector while education got N9.5 billion for capital expenditure, while N1.1 billon will be devoted to counterpart fund for UBEC, N1 billion for creation of Education Development Fund; and N1.2 billion as counterfund for World Bank Assisted State Education Programme & Intervention Project (SEPIP).
Also, N5 billion was devoted to Youth Empowerment and Development; Health, N7.8 billion; Small and Medium Enterprises Development, N1 billion; Water Resources and Public Utilities, N5.1 billion.
The government also made provision for Community Social Development Programme under which it advances money to communities to build projects of their choice under ‘N20 Million Community-Choose-Your-Own-Project Initiative’, which it allocated N7.5 billion.
Reviewing the performance of the previous budget, Obiano said that his team focused on the realization of his administration’s Vision and Mission Statements through a faithful implementation of the Economic Blueprint, made up of the 5 Pillars and 14 Enablers.
He said that his administration inherited 101 roads from its predecessor and completed 51 of them; six bridges and completed three; awarded 94 new roads and completed 20 of them and awarded 12 new bridges and completed 5 of them.
He said at a most difficult period when Nigeria witnessed the worst economic recession, his administration completed 71 roads and Awka has been transformed into one megacity of light at night. With a water- security and a well-lit and smooth network of roads, the time has come to explore the wonders of Anambra at night.
The Anambra Airport City Project, he said, was one big idea that finally took a definite shape in the outgoing fiscal year.
In implementing the budget, Obiano vowed he would not increase taxes. “Instead, it will be implemented through grants and counterpart funds; Capital Receipts, reimbursements and refunds from Federal Government for works done on Federal roads and Paris Club payments,” he said.