Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State has presented a budget of N207,671,495,300 for 2017 fiscal year to the State House of Assembly.
During the presentation of the budget which he christened “Budget of Self Reliance,”, the governor said due to the harsh economic downturn, attention would be given to sourcing money from the Internally Generated Revenue.
Ajimobi said, “In the face of the challenges in the outgoing year, arising from almost complete reliance on Federal Allocation which has grave consequences, as Federal Statutory Allocation itself is dependent on extraneous factors, this budget has been designed to be Internally Generated Revenue driven.”
In the Informal sector, the governor said the board would target 20 per cent of the population which is presently pegged at six million individuals with presumptive tax rates of N3000 per annum.
Giving details, the governor stated that the economic sector would gulp N46.618 billion, while the Social Services Sector has N25.646 billion. The Law and Justice sector would gulp N.880 billion and N7.654 billion is allocated to General Administration sector.
Ajimobi further explained that the aggregate percentage of 89.44 per cent of the total budget allocated to the economic and social sub-sector underscores the state government’s determination to continue to pursue a people-centered, empowerment-focused agenda.
This, he said, his government considered as the best antidote to the problem of poverty amongst the people.
As for education, the governor only said, “efforts will be made during 2017 to complete all on-going projects, such as construction and furnishing of classrooms and model schools across all zones of the state.
”Also, inspection of schools will be intensified towards enhanced quality of education and improved students’ performance in internal and external examinations.”
However, he promised the 32-member legislative arm that the Commissioner for Finance and Budget will present a detailed analysis of the budget proposal at a public forum in due course.
