The governor of Cross River State, Prof. Ben Ayade, today, signed into law the 2020 appropriation bill christened "Budget of Olimpotic Meristemasis".
The budget, which is the highest ever by a state in Nigeria has been criticized by financial experts. Many have argued that that the budget is unrealistic, given the financial reality of the state which is considered insolvent, and near bankrupt within the nation's financial circle.
The budget which was passed by the state House of Assembly on the 31st of December, 2019.
In his speech, the governor said the state is the first ever to present a budget of 1.1 trillion Naira.
He said " Budget of Olimpotic Meristemasis", the N1.1trillion budget is geared towards bringing to fruition, the signature projects of the administration, including the 270 kilometre superhighway connecting Cross River with Northern Nigeria.
82 percent of the budget is for capital expenditure while 18 percent is for recurrent expenditure".
He continued "There are two types of budgeting.
Either you do deficit budgeting or you do envelope budgeting.
In envelope budgetting, if you look at your medium term expenditure framework, you budget according to your expectation which is an agenda informed by how much you intend to achieve. Nobody has asked how Cross River which gets the lowest allocation in the country and services debt in the neighbourhood of N1.8 billion manages to pay teachers, civil servants, pensioners."
At any point in time a man's ability is limited by his financial muscle his brain has failed
For us in Cross River, with governor and his deputy as Professors, it will be a thing of shame for us to budget based on our envelope size
In the 2020 appropriation bill I have just signed into law, we have developed factories that have matured to a point where you need only operating capital to have them start commercial production. It will be the end of suffering in Cross River.
Cross River state has 33 industries in four years and you can point at them. So, I want to assure all of you that this budget of N1.1 trillion is something we can achieve, something we can accomplish"
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