Akeredolu signs 2020 Appropriation Bill

Ondo State Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu has signed the 2020 Appropriation Bill into law.

Education has the largest percentage of the budget provision, followed by infrastructure.

The governor said the 2020 budget christened: “Budget of Growth,” passed by the state House of Assembly, provides for aggregate expenditures of N187,858,525,273.00.

He said the amount is divided into N10.508billion, representing 5.6 per cent for Debt Servicing; N14.180 billion, representing 7.6 percent as Statutory Transfers to Ondo State Oil Producing Area Development Commission (OSOPADEC), Ondo State Internal Revenue Service (ODIRS) and 10 percent share of Independent Revenue to Joint Account and Allocation Committee (JAAC) of Local Governments in the state.

According to the Governor, the sums of N82.700billion and N80.470 billion, representing 44.1 percent and 42.7 per cent are for Recurrent Expenditure and Capital Development, respectively.

Akeredolu explained that the policy directions of the budget were largely the products of the inputs garnered during Town Hall meetings with various stakeholders across the state and the five-point development agenda (the Blueprint to Progress) of his administration.

The governor, who identified unavailability and inadequacy of required funds as one of the key challenges to budget implementation, said his administration had designed many ingenious and innocuous ways of bringing in more prospective payers into the tax net.

Akeredolu thanked members of the state House of Assembly, led by the Speaker, Bamidele Oloyelogun for the detailed scrutiny and passage of the budget in record time.