1st May, 2015
Kazeem Ugbodaga
The aggregate budgetary expenditure of the Lagos State Government in the last eight years has been put at N2.7 trillion, Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Ben Akabueze discloses.
Akabueze who made this known at the Ministerial briefing to commemorate the 4th year of the 2nd term in office of Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, added that, the average budget performance over the period stood at 79 per cent.
He noted that the expenditure was funded with a total revenue amounting to N2.433 trillion representing 89% of the total expenditure out of which 59% was from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
The average sectoral allocation of the budget from 2008-2015 was broken down as follows: General Public Service 23.70%, Public Order & Safety 3.12 per cent, Economic Affairs 31.58 per cent, Environmental Protection 8.56 per cent, Housing & Community Amenities 9.17 per cent, Health 7.66 per cent, Recreation, Culture and Religion 1.52 per cent, Education 14.09 per cent Social Protection 0.60 per cent.
He reported that, the first quarter Y2015 Budget performance showed a 59 per cent performance, as against 67 per cent performance recorded over the same period in Y2014. The distractions of the protracted election season clearly adversely impacted performance of the budget, in addition to the declining federal revenue allocations.
Akabueze said that, in line with Goal 8 of the MDGs which enjoins all governments to develop a Global Partnership for Development, the government had continued to reach out to development partners and always made necessary provisions in its annual budget for counterpart fund as a demonstration of its commitment to programmes/projects implementation with Development Partners.
The result of the commitment, according to him, was that the State enjoyed donors support to the tune of N15.13 billion in the last eight years while counterpart funding over the same period stood at N27.24 billion.
The commissioner revealed that N6.89 billion was expended on 657 CGS projects covering health, environment, educational, water and sanitation sectors, adding that while the Federal Government contributed N3.7 billion, the State provided counterpart fund of N2.5 billion and local government, N520 million.
He said in order to ensure that the public get value for expended funds, the Ministry monitored the execution of programmes/ projects to ensure that they meet specification, adding that payment for projects/procurements valued N500,000 and above required certification by the Monitoring and Evaluation Department (MED) of the Ministry of Economic planning and Budget.
“In the discharge of this responsibility, the Ministry issued Pre-Payment Certificates in the sum of N39.67 billion relating to 1,246 projects in the past one year; while 8,961 projects/programmes valued at N1.13 billion were certified in the last eight years,” he said.
Narrating the empirical based economic management strategy of Lagos State, Akabueze said the State relied very much on data in taking informed decisions regarding resource mobilization and allocation, as well as measurement of the impact of its policies, programmes and projects.