The Delta State governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, on Wednesday presented a 2015 budget proposal of N327.68bn to the state House of Assembly for approval. The proposal is made up of recurrent estimates of N161.6bn and a capital estimates of N166.07bn. The 2015 estimates are lower than the 2014 fiscal estimates by N123.05bn.
The governor explained that the decrease was due to the fall in the price of crude oil in the international market. Sectoral breakdown of the capital estimates revealed that a lion’s share of N50.32bn would go to the economic sector. The sum of N34bn has been voted for the Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission.
Uduaghan said that N68.53bn of the recurrent estimates was allocated to personnel costs, N51.33bn for overhead costs and N41.69bn set aside for consolidated revenue charges. He gave the sources of funding for the budget as statutory allocation, including mineral revenue derivation, representing 63.74 per cent while internally generated revenue would be 18.6 per cent.
The governor said, “The 2015 budget is driven by the successes recorded in various sectors of the state’s economy in the past seven years up to the 2014 Budget of Consolidation, Sustainable Economic Growth and Development.
“The 2015 budget is aimed at consolidating the achievement of 2014 budget as well as completing all on-going projects and programmes that will facilitate the fulfilment of the administration’s goal of making Delta State one of the most industrialised and developed states in Nigeria by 2020.”
