24th December, 2014
Abiodun Onafuye/Abeokuta
Ogun State Commissioner for Forestry, Alhaji Adebayo Fari has disclosed that his ministry had as at October 2014 generated the sum of N128.9m representing 36.85 percent revenue for the state.
Fari stated this while defending the 2015 budget before the State House of Assembly Committee on Finance and Appropriation.
He noted that in the coming year, the Ministry planned to spend N1.568 billion as total expenditure, hinting that of that amount, N389m was being earmarked for personnel and overhead costs, while N1.179bn had been set aside for execution of capital projects.
The commissioner also disclosed that the Forestry Ministry would ensure food security, provision of raw materials for industrial growth and expansion of infrastructural facilities for socio–economic development with emphasis on sustainable environment in the next fiscal year.
Fari assured that the ministry would carry out comprehensive inventory of nine forest reserves in the state starting with Omo and Olokemeji Forest reserves in 2015.
In a related development, the Ogun State Forestry Plantation Project (Area J4) intends to establish additional 400 hectares of Teak and Gmelina Plantations as well as 500 hectares of logged area for regeneration and revenue generation purposes.
To achieve this, the plantation will gulp N284m as its total expenditure in year 2015, N134m had been budgeted for recurrent expenditure while N150m was set aside for capital expenditure.