The Cross River House of Assembly has passed an expanded budget of N354.5 billion, presented to the assembly on October 29, by Governor Ben Ayade.
It will be recalled that the budget, tagged Budget of Conjugated Agglutination, totaling N276.28 billion, was earlier presented to the House, but it was increased to N354.51 billion by the House.
The increase, which is about N78 billion, represents a 28 per cent increase of the budget sum.
Speaking on the expanded budget, Sunday Achunekang, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, said that personnel and overhead costs amounted to N118.96 billion.
He said that capital expenditure amounted to N225.75 billion, while statutory expenditures stood at N9.8 billion.
Mr Achunekang said the increase in the budget sum was a result of funds that were not reflected in the estimates as presented by the governor.
According to him, soon after the governor presented the budget, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, agreed to support the State Government with funds, amounting to N40 billion.
“This will be directed to establishing a Tertiary Cancer Research Centre, Tertiary Orthopaedic Centre, University Library for British Canadian School and Tertiary Tourism Centre.
“Again, approval for procurement of critical hospital equipment like PET scan, Linear Accelerator and Cyclotrons were received after the budget had been received.
“These items will be bought with the current exchange rate at about N4.8 billion.
“It was also discovered that the initial provision of N14 billion was not enough for debt servicing and refinancing. So, additional N20 billion has been put in to augment this provision,” he said.
The Speaker of the House, Eteng Williams, said the House had done the “needful”.
Mr Williams said the assembly discovered that there were no provisions for the University of Cross River State, training of members of the state House of Assembly and provision for the office of the auditor-general.
“Also, there was no provision for the newly-built teachers training institute in Biase and that some ministries did not even have personnel costs, among other omissions.
“We looked at every ministry and sector, line by line,” said Mr Williams.
He added that the House has fulfilled the provision of the law which said the budget had to be passed on or before December 31.
(NAN)
