Ajimobi presents N207.6 billion 2017 budget

By Agboola Bayo
Ibadan

Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo state, yesterday presented a budget of N207.671 billion for the 2017 fiscal year to the State House of Assembly.
Presenting the budget, titled “Budget of Self Reliance”, the governor declared that 2017 budget represented an increase of 19.13 per cent compared to the 2016 budget.
According to the governor, the recurrent expenditure will cost N126.87 billion which is 61.09 per cent of the budget while the capital expenditure will take N80.80 billion or 38.91%.

He emphasized that the personnel cost  made up of Salaries, Allowances and Promotion Arrears stands at N56.04 Billion or 26.99 per cent while overhead cost accounts for N20.04Billion which is 9.75%, and that N50.79bn or 24.45 is meant for the Consolidate Revenue Fund Charges to sum up the total Recurrent Expenditure of N126.87 billion.
The governor pointed out that the budget has been designed to be Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) driven, saying that “N107.23bn or 51.64 per cent of the proposed N207.671 billion Budget is to be funded from IGR, N66.49bn or 32.01% from Federation Account while N33.97bn or 16.35 per cent is expected from capital receipts, which is restructuring and reallocation of funds to priority areas”.

Ajimobi hinted that the government anchored the 2017 budgetary proposals on Infrastructure, Agriculture and its value-chain framework, Education and Health, pledging that other sectors would be given adequate attention in order to ensure that the budget achieves it theme as budget of self-reliance.
The governor however added that the restructured Oyo state Board of Internal Revenue was poised for enhanced performance to ensure a realistic budget tenure, saying “in the face of the challenges in the outgoing year, arising from almost complete reliance on Federal Allocation which has grave consequences, as Federal Statutory Allocation itself is dependent on extraneous factors, this budget has been designed to be Internally Generated Revenue driven.
“In the Informal sector, the Board is targeting 20% of the population which is presently pegged at 6million individuals with presumptive tax rate of N3000 per annum.”