Clement Nnachi, Abakaliki
Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State, on Monday, signed into law the revised 2020 budget of N132.002 billion.
The revised budget recorded a 25.9 percent reduction from the earlier budget of N178,136 which was assented into law in January 2020.
Speaking at the virtual event held at the Ecumenical Center Abakaliki, on Monday, Governor Umahi said that the downward reduction of the budget became necessary due to the country’s economic challenges which affected financial resources of the state.
According to him, “the reasons for the dwindling finances include; the negative effect of COVID-19 pandemic and the reduction in the oil prices from the original $57 dollars per barrel to a Federal Government approved $25 dollars per barrel.
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“A reduction in the nation’s oil production per day from 2.187million barrel per day to 1.7million barrel per day and devaluation of the Naira to Dollar from a rate of N305 per $1 to a rate of N360 per $1.
“The budget has a total Covid-19 expenditure of N28,615 billion accounting for 21.68% of the total budget expenditure”, he said.
“As a result of the expected low receivables from all sources of revenue, various items were either reduced or in some cases removed entirely from different Ministries. Departments and Agenncies in the approved 2020 budget”
“In coming up with the 2020 revised budget, all sectors were affected in the earlier mentioned adjustments, however, special attention was paid to the MDAs that has direct dealing with the COVID-19 crisis”, he added.
Te governor also said that a breakdown of the budget shows that Recurrent expenditure, personnel cost reduced by 14.21% from N18.158B to N15.577 billion.
“Besides overhead cost increased by 23.43% from N22.922 billion to N28.293 billion, recurrent contingency was reduced by 80%.
The Governor said that capital expenditure had a 33% reduction in Capital Expenditure from N127 billion l to N85.13 billion and capital contingency reduced by 60% from N5 billion to N2 billion.
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Speaking against the backdrop of the reopening of schools, Governor Umahi said if all the states of the federation were opening schools for teaching and learning, Ebonyi State will not join them until all necessary measures were put in place to safe guard pupils, students and teachers against the Coronavirus pandemic.
He noted that schools in the state would remain closed until their premises were cleared of bushes and all other necessary measures put in place for effective teaching and learning.
“Let me make it clear that Ebonyi schools will not open now. If every states is opening their schools, Ebonyi will not follow them.
“We have started the process to see how we can reopen and the process is to use the communities to clear all the schools; primary schools and secondary schools and then send medical teams to look at them and then they do sample testing of the teachers.”
