12th August, 2014
By Eromosele Ebhomele
Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos state on Tuesday urged the state House of Assembly to approve a request for him to re-order the 2014 budget of the state.
The governor said in a letter, read by the clerk of the House, that the request had become very important for the government to meet the demands and expectations of the people.
Fashola said the re-ordering is proposed from the capital expenditure provisions of ten agencies with a total value of N9.960 billion.
The governor said these demands have become “sufficiently compelling and cannot wait until 2015.”
In the letter titled ‘Y2014 Budget Re-Ordering Of Priorities’, Fashola said it would successfully help to take care of issues incuding the reversal of LASU school fees, adding that, this “requires us to make provisions to cover LASU shortfall in projected revenues in order to service the school.”
The re-ordering would also assist the “unanticipated but very urgent need to address the threat of the Ebola Virus epidemic and also a need for counterpart funding request that will enable the state to access developmental funds to install solar power panels in 172 public schools and 11 primary health centres in the first phase.”
He said the request would not affect the original budget size of N489.69 billion passed by the House for the year.
“We have discovered that there are still unutilised provisions by some MDAs, which may remain so till year end.
“Hence we are proposing to move such provisions to where they are more urgently needed to enable the state government address pressing needs in the areas identified above and other areas like security, housing etc,” he said.
Fashola further said the re-ordering would urgently address some of the critical unbudgeted expenditure requests by various ministries, departments and agencies.
“We have received requests aggregating to the sum of N79.302 billion but will clearly be unable to accommodate most of these request this year,” he stressed.
The House, after deliberating the request, asked its committee on Economic Planning and Budget to look into the it and report back to the House on Thursday due to its urgency.