Austerity: Cross River Slashes 2013 Budget

by crossriverwatch admin

Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State

Cross River State Government has slashed its 2013 budget size of N152,418,731,311,73 to N151,087,128,603.04 as proposed revenue and expenditure for the remaining quarter of the year.

The State Governor, Senator Liyel Imoke in a letter to the speaker of the State House of Assembly dated September 30, 2013 captioned “Request for the Revision of 2013 Budget”, said the 2013 budget which had earlier been presented and tagged, “Budget of Delivery” was passed into law by the House of Assembly on February 20, this year.

However, he said a number of developments which were not contemplated during the budget preparation have arisen necessitating a revision of the budget size.

Imoke said “arising from shortages in projected revenue, certain revision has been proposed for some capital projects and programmes to enhance the completion of some critical projects as some of these projects/programmes have been for upward/downward adjustments.

“The inflows in the proposed revision include loan for Calabar Convention Centre which has been increased from N1.5b to N4.9b; loan for Airport bye-pass which was not captured in the approved 2013 budget now has N1.5b, loan for counter funds also not captured now gets N1b while loan for RAMP projects that were N4b got nothing in the revised budget.

“Loan for Rural Development Agency (RUDA) that was not captured in the 2013 budget got N1.5b in the proposed revised budget while improvement in revenue generation has now increased from N400m in the approved 2013 budget to N500M.

Finance cost and Insurance rose from N100m to N200m, Calabar Convention Centre from N6b to 8b, new development infrastructure was slashed down from N800m to N700m and Port Harcourt Electricity projects also slashed down from N3b to N750m”.

He noted that, “Rehabilitation and Maintenance of Urban Roads also rose from N330m in the 2013 approved budget size to N1 billion. Printing of revised secondary education textbooks was slashed down from N300m to N200m.

“Comprehensive renovation of 40 secondary schools was also reviewed downwards from N900m to N650m while comprehensive renovation of 60 secondary schools was slashed from N750m to N250m.

Debt servicing was increased from approved budget of 2013 from N13b to N20.4b, while 2014 National Sports Festival Facilities was increased from N140m to N1b and Housing of National Sports Festival also increased from N300m to N400m in the proposed revise budget before the House of Assembly for consideration and approval which has passed a second reading”.