Governor Abdullaziz Yari of Zamfara State signs Budget law
By Ishaq Zaki
Gov. Abdu’aziz Yari of Zamfara has signed the 2017 Appropriation Bill in to law, assuring constituents of improved performance of the budget.
The N107.7 billion budget submitted by Yari was increased by the state House of Assembly by N7.4 billion bringing the approved figure to N115.3 billion.
Presenting the approved budget to the governor, the Speaker of the House, Alhaji Sanusi Rikiji, explained that the figure was raised considering the dire need to implement various developmental projects.
“We consider expectations of road contract projects funds from the Federal Government which promised to pay the state government next year.
“When we go through the appropriation documents, we understand that is an extraction from the multi-year rolling plan presented by the state government to the House earlier.
“This brought to our attention to the need to embrace and illustrate the culture of long term planning that will consolidate the modest progress we have made so far and this guided us to the attainment of the stated goals and appreciable level of social, economic prosperity achieved in political stability.
“Considering the state of our economy during the budget defence by various ministries and parastatals we gave emphasis on revenue generation to determine how to improve the revenue of our state.
“We also gave priority to areas that can improve the level of productivity and human development,” he stated.
As stated by him, the legislature resolved to increase it by 7.6 billion after scrutinising the budget.
The Speaker added that capital project was allocated N74.2 billion as against the N70.19 billion earlier presented by the governor.
The recurrent expenditure was also increased from N32.7 billion to N41.59 billion, he stated.
“As we may recall that two weeks ago, N107.7 billion was presented to the House by the governor. Therefore, with this development the size of the budget has increased to N115.3 billion.”
Responding shortly after assenting to the bill, Yari commended the lawmakers for a speedy passage.
He assured of sustained hard work hard to ensure effective implementation of the budget which is going to give priority to improvement of productivity and human development.
“As I stated earlier, the 2016 is the most difficult year experienced by our administration in terms of poor performance in the budget implementation which we are hoping to improve in the 2017 budget.
“We will improve our revenue generation strategies so that we can implement meaningful projects contained in the budget,” the governor stated.
He also thanked the legislators for their understanding and mutual working relationship with the executive and judiciary which he stated led to the success recorded in moving the state forward.