24th July, 2014
Lagos State Government has recorded cumulative mid-year budget performance of 86 percent, despite a big drop in its receipt from federal transfer.
The State, which budgeted N489.69 Billion for 2014 performed 76 percent in the first quarter and 106 percent in the second quarter leading to a cumulative score of 86 percent, a performance which an elated Governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN) attributed to prudent economic performance and financial discipline.
Speaking to State House Correspondents at the Lagos House, Ikeja after the Budget review session, he said the performance which is coming in a pre-election year in unprecedented and is consistent with the commitment that he made and continues to reiterate that until the last day, the present government will be working to deliver service.
He explained that the impact of that performance could be seen in some of the housing projects that the administration had concluded and some of the roads it handed over in the second quarter in places like Yaya Abatan, College Road and the adjoining network of about seven roads and places like Langbasa.
“So that is the physical connection to the numbers that you are seeing and the housing projects particularly and a lot of drainage work and construction that we accelerated in the second quarter preparatory to the commencement of rain.”
“There is still work to do, there are so many places where there is still attention needed and many projects also coming to completion, many have been completed, many would be completed again in the third quarter and so people will get relief just as we continue. You will never finish this work,” he reiterated.
Fashola noted that the revenue to the state from the federal purse has diminished over the last 14 months, adding that what the state used to have before was on an average, a sum of N9 billion or N10 billion but has dipped to about N7 billion to N8 billion monthly.
“The reality, therefore, is that our wage bill which is now averaging about N6.5 billion per month means that by the time you get N7 billion or N8 billion and by the time you pay salaries, you are left with barely one and half billion naira and by the time you pay subvention, it is almost exhausted,” he said.
He explained that the state has been living on its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and that some of the things that it used to do and finance with income from the federal allocation are now being financed by IGR because there is a gap that has crystallised and some states regrettably are now borrowing money even to get things going.
“So it was a good thing that this state conceived the idea many years ago to take its own destiny into its hands, to get people to contribute and as I say, if it is a Commonwealth, it must be built by common contributions and that is what our taxes have done for us.”
“So when you talk about free health today, you are talking about free education and you are talking about roads, bridges and drainages, 70 percent of what we have spent on governing Lagos has come from a common contribution, peoples’ income, so people who come now and say don’t pay tax, they don’t like you, they are the real enemies of the people,” he reiterated.
He affirmed that if the people stop paying tax, it only means that Lagos State will go cap in hand every month to go and collect N7 billion and the big dream of people that are still asking for roads then, may not be achievable by the government.
He added that a closer look at the performance would also reveal that during the first half of this year, the budget performed much better than the previous year in terms of the completion of ongoing capital projects.
He gave a firm commitment that for the rest of the year, completion of ongoing projects would remain the focus with the delivering of more of the roads that have been in progress and over 200 of such roads currently under construction simultaneously.