31st January, 2011
Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, South West Nigeria today signed into law the 2011 budget of N450.8 billion which was passed by the State House of Assembly last week.
The initial budget sent to the House for approval by the governor in December 2010 was N445.18 billion, while he later sent additional N3.033 billion to the House for approval to cater for the accreditation requirement of courses at the Lagos State University. This increased the budget to N448.471 billion.
The Assembly added N2.57 billion to make the overall approved budget N450.775 billion.
The Recurrent Expenditure of the approved budget is N198.182 billion while the Capital Expenditure stood at N252.593 billion.
Special Adviser to the Governor on Political Matters and Powers Bureau, Alhaji Abdullateef Abdulkareem analysed the budget as passed by the House of Assembly and urged the governor to sign it into law for implementation by the state government.
Signing the budget into law, Fashola promised that the budget would be used judiciously for the benefit of all sectors of the economy as well as impact on the lives of Lagosians.
The goals of the 2011 budget are aggressive revenue generation, completion of ongoing infrastructure, maintenance of existing infrastructure development, mitigation of global warming through greening, among others.
Meanwhile, in the approved budget Fashola earmarked N74.7 billion to tackle bad roads and provide infrastructure this year.
Thus, as revealed in the 2011 approved budget by the Lagos State House of Assembly, the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure had the largest share in the budget with N74.7 billion apart from the N2.5 billion subvention it would also get from the government.
The ministry also has as its Personnel and Overhead Costs standing N745 million and N793 million respectively.
With this large share from the budget, the state government is expected to focus more on road rehabilitation and construction as well as infrastructure renewal this year. Coming next to the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure in terms of project execution this year is the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget with N36.5 billion to carry out capital project apart from the N2.3 billion subvention it will get plus N189.6 million personnel cost and N27.1 billion overhead cost.
The Ministry of Transportation is expected to spend N24.8 billion in executing projects in the transportation sector this year while that of the Environment is 17.2 billion apart from the N7.6 billion subvention it will get. While N16.6 billion was earmarked for capital projects in the Education sector, the Ministry of Health will spend N15.5 billion on capital projects this year plus N1.6 billion subventions.
Also, N14 billion was allocated to statewide projects while the projects to be executed by the Ministry of Commerce will gulp N7 billion.
While the Ministry of Finance gets N5.7 billion for capital project, that of Science and Technology gets N5.6 billion.
The sum of N4.4 billion; N4.5 billion and N4.3 billion was earmarked as capital project for the House of Assembly, Ministry of Justice and the Judiciary respectively.
The Ministries of Housing, Rural Development, Sports and Agriculture and Cooperative get N2 billion, N2.1 billion, N1.5 billion and N1.35 billion respectively while N4.9 billion was budgeted for Social Protection.
The Ministries of Lands Bureau, Physical Planning and Urban Development; Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs and Information and Strategy get as capital projects N3.6 billion, N1.5 billion, N1 billion and N600 million respectively.