Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi yesterday presented to the state House of Assembly an appropriation bill of N101.1 billion to approve for the 2016 fiscal year.

The bill tagged ‘Budget of Divine Actualisation’ set aside N62,396,750,000.00 for capital expenditure representing 61.68% of the budget outlay while N38,757,896,030.00 was set aside for recurrent expenditure being 38 % of the total estimate.

The total estimate of about N101.1b is slightly above that of 2015 which was N96.52 billion.

The economic sector got N36.890 billion the largest chunk, being 59% of the estimate of which the governor said was with the basic aim of tackling challenges in the roads, water, electricity, agriculture, education, commerce and industrial sectors.

The Ministry of Works got the highest allocation within the economic sector with N25 billion, representing 67.8%, Ministry of Water Resources, N3 billion, Commerce and Industry, N2 billion while other ministries shared N6.89 billion being 18.7% of the budget for the sector.

The social sector got a total of N10.304 billion representing 16.5% of the capital budget with education having allocation of N5.909 billion, health N2.445 billion and others N1.95 billion.

Judiciary and regional (capital city, Abakaliki and environs) received N1.117 billion and N0.203 billion respectively.

Giving an overview of the 2015 budget Umhai noted that the past administration had on 30th December 2014 presented to the House her 2015 appropriation bill.

He explained that the then Executive did not come up to defend the budget, a situation that dragged until he was sworn in as governor on May 29, 2015. The governor added that the development made him to review the estimate and presented same to the 5th house of assembly on June 22, 2015.

•Photo shows Governor Umahi.

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