By CHARLES IWUOHA

Governor Peter Mbah has signed a N521.5bn Enugu State 2024 Budget into law, saying it would engender disruptive economic growth, radical infrastructural development, and efficient service delivery.

Mbah, who said that the Enugu State 2024 Appropriation Law, consisting N414.3bn Capital Expenditure, representing 79 per cent of the budget, and N107.2 billion, representing 21 per cent of the budget, would rely heavily on Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) charged members of the executive arm of government on robust revenue mobilisation and service delivery.

Speaking during the budget signing, which was witnessed by members of the Enugu State House of Assembly, led by the Speaker, Hon. Uchenna Ugwu, as well as Commissioners and other top government functionaries at the Government House, Enugu on Wednesday, Mbah thanked Members of the state legislature for their support across party lines.

He said that the expeditious passage of the budget was a product of executive-legislature collaboration during the making of the budget estimates, and listed the multiple gains expected from the 2024 budget.

“What this budget signing means to the people of Enugu is that we are going to be spending over N400bn on capital projects in the next year. This is the first time in the history of the state that we are spending that size of funds on capital projects because we are spending 20 times more than what has been typically our Capital Expenditure outlay in Enugu State.

“We called this the ‘Budget of Disruptive Economic Growth’ based on the size of our Capital Expenditure. It also means that we are going to have large economic activities in Enugu State. You can imagine an economy that is typically used to doing N20bn Capital Expenditure now going to witness over N400bn Capital Expenditure. It is going to be monumental in the ways our people are lifted out of poverty and in the ways

economic activities will blossom.

“Most important is that it is going to ensure that we address most of the gaps we have in our social services. In the education sector, the signing of this bill into law means that we are now looking forward to 260 smart schools across the state.

“It also means that we are looking forward to 260 Type-2 primary healthcare centres across all our wards in Enugu State. It means that we are going to have radical infrastructural development.

“We are going to build New Enugu City. We are going to have our roads paved. We are going to have feeder roads paved as well as the access roads to our farmlands.

“We talk about scaling up our production in the agriculture sector. Our Special Agro Processing Zones will come to life. The signing into law of this budget today will ensure that we grow our agriculture so that it is not going to be just for food, it is also going to be for export.

“It also means that a new sector will be introduced, the energy and minerals sector, which we hope to use to drive our revenue. It means that our resources in that sector will be harnessed for the benefits of Ndi Enugu”.

On funding of the budget, Governor Mbah said: “We are talking about less than 12 percent of our revenue size that we are going to borrow to execute this budget. That is enormous as we are expecting to mobilize over N300bn from our domestic sources, and that has not happened before.

“What this means is that we are all going to work tirelessly to ensure that these revenues are realised. It also means that for us at the Executive Council, our meetings would largely be on our revenue performance.

The governor further explained that his administration was taking other critical steps, such as the e-governance and automation of government services to ensure efficient service delivery.

“We have gone to an advanced stage on the e-governance initiate. This is going to ensure that our citizens in Enugu are able access government services without the need of actually going to the ministries or to the banks,” he stated.

Governor Mbah, however, appealed to the people of Enugu State to bear with the administration over some inconveniences that the transformation efforts might entail, saying efforts will be made to mitigate the pains occasioned by policies like the expansion of roads.

Recall the Enugu 2024 budget estimates presented by Mbah at the State House of Assembly on December 5, 2023, was passed on December 21, with the Speaker, Hon. Ugwu, assuring a robust oversight function for diligent implementation of the budget.

“Let me take this opportunity to thank our dear governor, Peter Mbah, for giving a lifeline to the economy of this state. On our part, I assure our people that it is not going to be business as usual. We are going to ensure that every fund we have appropriated is put to judicious use,” he said.

Update news