Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State has presented a budget of N157.1 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, titled ‘Budget for sustained economic growth and youth empowerment’ to the Anambra State House of Assembly.
The budget is against N166.9 billion presented in the 2018 fiscal year, which represented a 44 percent increase on the 2017 budget.
The year under review was a milestone for the state in the education sector with five school girls from Regina Pacis Model Secondary, Onitsha, taking the world by storm when they swept aside advanced countries like US, China, Spain, Turkey and Uzbekistan to win the gold medal at the World Technovation Challenge in San Francisco, USA.
Amala Ezenwa, a primary 4 head teacher from Awada, won the overall best school administrator in Nigeria in 2018, while the state government demonstrated a great capacity to manage crisis this year when torrential flooding submerged a large portion of Anambra North.
Governor Obiano said the government had maintained a firm handling of the security situation of the state with a donation of 40 patrol trucks to security agencies and 50 motorcycles to the special motorbike squad to mop up petty criminals.
He said the state had continued to implement the economic stimulus package, as agriculture had remained a major pillar of his administration, adding that major performance indicators point to a positive growth in the 2018 planting season.
He said the proposed 2019 budget was earmarked with 41.3 percent as recurrent expenditure and 58.7 percent for capital expenditure.
The governor said the draft estimates for 2019 clearly demonstrated his administration’s determination to continue delivering good governance and purposeful leadership to the people.
He said the highlights of the sectoral capital plans of continued intervention on road works and infrastructure estimated N22.4 billion of which construction of new roads would gulp N20.9 billion and N1.5 billion for Anambra State Road Maintenance Agency.
The state government is projecting a total capital expenditure of N11.9 billion for education sector; N4 billion allocated to empower about 100,000 youths through vocational, agricultural and artisan training programmes, he said.
There was also additional N100 million earmarked for film village to facilitate job creation in the creative sector.
The state government has in 2019 budgeted N9 billion for health sector and N500 million to the Micro Small and Medium Enterprise funding programmes and N4.8 billion for water resources and public utilities.
The governor said the state government had budgeted N2.8 billion for the third phase of community development projects to consolidate the gains of ‘N20 million Community-Chose-Your-Own-Project.’
