The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, on Wednesday, presented a N320.35bn budget to the Edo State House of Assembly for the 2023 fiscal year, representing a 44.3 percent increase from the N222bn budgeted for the year 2022.
According to the governor, the document, christened ‘Budget of Resilience and Transformation,’ is informed by the need to “build a resilient and sustainable foundation for the reforms, initiatives and programmes that we have embarked on in the last six years.”
Obaseki, who presented the budget to the State Assembly sitting in Benin City, said the budget comprises N192 billion for capital and N127.5 billion for recurrent expenditure.
The governor listed education, health, road transport, buildings, agriculture, energy and electricity as well as economic enablers as the areas of focus in the 2023 fiscal year.
He said: “our strategic goal is to utilize manufacturing, technology, agriculture, arts, culture and entertainment as the catalyst to promote sustained investment across all sectors of the Edo economy”.
Obaseki noted that the total projected revenue for 2023 is N300 billion, consisting of N144.26 billion statutory allocation, made up of Value Added Tax (VAT) of N41.2 billion.
He stated that the budget estimate also contained a capital receipts of 46.1bn; IGR, N60.4 billion and N4 billion from grants, among others, adding that “the balance of will be sourced from development financing and financial institutions.”
The governor further stated, “The revenue estimates for the budget is based on a $70 per barrel benchmark for crude oil and average daily production of 1.69m barrels per day as well as an increase in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to N60.4bn.”
