Benue House of Assembly passes 2024 budget

The Benue State House Assembly has approved the state Governor, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia’s, budget for 2024.

The Budget of “Infrastructure Development, Job Creation, and Poverty Alleviation” proposed estimates to consolidate the priority programmes and projects that were carefully selected to move the state forward on its path to becoming an economically self-sufficient federating unit of Nigeria in line with the goals set out in the Benue state development plan.

The 2024 proposed estimates (Financing, Recurrent and capital Expenditure Bills) was given Second Reading on Tuesday 12th December, 2023 at the sitting of the House and referred to the Appropriation Committee for scrutiny and further processing.

Thus, the other Committees of the House were absorbed as Sub-Committees to the House Committee on Appropriation under standard legislative practices and procedures.

After the Budget went through vigorous budgeting processes, the sum of N225, 727,395,206.97, being the total budget with the sum of N30, 798,000,000.00 only as deficit financing.

The breakdown of the budget has recurrent Expenditure taking N110,487,033,965.99 while capital expenditure stood at N115,240,361,240.99.

According to a statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the Speaker, Raphael Akume, the House, while considering the budget before its final passage, on Thursday, resolved to caution public sector entities in the state against extra-budgetary spending as it is a breach of the Constitution, while also considering taking decisive actions against public sector entities that are avowed to perpetuate a violation of this constitutional provisions.