Education, personnel costs and the completion of ongoing capital projects top the list of priority projects the Niger State Government plans to execute in 2015, Governor Babangida Aliyu said yesterday.
The governor spoke in Minna, the state capital, when he presented the 2015 budget proposal to the House of Assembly.
Aliyu said N421 billion of the N80.8 billion the budget estimates was for recurrent expenditure and N38.6 billion for capital expenditure.
The governor told the lawmakers that Value Added Tax (VAT) was expected to generate over N10 billion, while capital receipts and internally generated revenue (IGR) would each generate N9 billion.
The budget, he said, would depend on over 82 per cent from the Federation Account, adding that the government had provided the necessary safety valves to absorb the shocks from the continued drop in the price of oil at the international market.
Insisting that the payment of salaries would continue to be a priority to his administration, even when the economy continued to dwindle, Aliyu said the government had set aside the fund for the payment of pensions and gratuities for retirees.
According to him, the state government, in the last seven years, spent N14 billion on the payment of pension.
