Cross River State House of Assembly
C’River Assembly passes 2022 Budget, increases estimates by N78bn to N354.5bn
[From ANIEKAN ANIEKAN, Calabar]
Cross River House of Assembly led by Rt. Hon. Eteng Jonas Williams has passed the 2022 budget of Conjugated Agglutination presented to it by the state governor, Professor Ben Ayade.
The house met as a committee of the whole and increased the total budget size from N276, 279, 960, 667.35 as presented by the governor to N354, 505, 535, 313.25.
This amount to about N78 billion which represents a 28.3 % increase.
A breakdown of the budget shows that personnel/overhead cost amounts to N11, 965, 354, 107.96; Capital Expenditure amounts to N225, 746, 261, 604.98 while Statutory Expenditure is N9, 802, 919, 600.31.
Other highlights of the budget show that the British Canadian School and Ogoja Polytechnic were allocated 500 million naira each.
Also N100 million has been set aside for Cross River Health Insurance Scheme, N250 million for settlement of internally displaced persons, N300 million for the rehabilitation of the NYSC Orientation Camp, 893 million for Homeland security and 700 million naira for the purchase of vehicles for political office holders.
Speaking on the new estimates, Sunday Achunekang, Chairman House committee on appropriations said the increase is as a result of funds which were not reflected in the estimates as presented by the governor.
According to him, “soon after the governor presented the budget, TET 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 Orthopedic 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 cycloton were received after the budget had been received and these items will be bought with the current exchange rate at about N4.8 billion.
“Finally, it was discovered that the initial provision of 14 billion was not enough for debt servicing and refinancing. Additional 20 billion naira has therefore been used to augment this provision”, he said.
He added that the committee also recommended areas where the internally generated revenue of the state can be increased like waterways, interstate transport service and haulage services.
In his response, speaker of the state assembly, Rt. Hon. Eteng Jonas Williams said the house has done the needful and also fulfilled the provision of the law which says the budget has to be passed on or before the 31st of December.
He asked the Clerk to send a clean copy of the bill to the executive on or before the 31st of December 2021.
