The executive Governor of Enugu state, has signed into law the N521.5bn Enugu State 2024 Budget, consisting N414.3bn Capital Expenditure representing 79 percent of the budget, and N107.2bn Recurrent Expenditure, representing 21 percent.
In his remarks he said, “This budget aims to engender disruptive economic growth, radical infrastructural development, and efficient service delivery.
What this budget signing means to the people of Enugu is that we are going to be spending over N400bn on capital projects in the next year. This is the first time in the history of the state that we are spending that size of funds on capital projects because we are spending 20 times more than what has been typically our Capital Expenditure outlay in Enugu State.
We called this the ‘Budget of Disruptive Economic Growth’ based on the size of our Capital Expenditure. It also means that we are going to have large economic activities in Enugu State. One can imagine an economy that is typically used to doing N20bn Capital Expenditure now going to witness over N400bn Capital Expenditure. It is going to be monumental in the ways our people are lifted out of poverty and in the ways economic activities will blossom.
Most important is that it is going to ensure that we address most of the gaps we have in our social services. We are now looking forward to 260 smart schools and 260 Type-2 primary healthcare centres across all our wards in Enugu State. It means that we are going to have radical infrastructural development.
We are going to build New Enugu City. We are going to have our roads paved. We are going to have feeder roads paved as well as the access roads to our farmlands.
We shall scale up our production in the agriculture sector. Our Special Agro Processing Zones will come to life.
This budget is also novel because less than 12 percent of our revenue size will be borrowed for the execution, while we are expecting to mobilize an enormous N300bn from our domestic sources.
The expeditious passage of the budget was a product of executive-legislature collaboration during the preparation of the budget estimates. My gratitude to the Hon. Speaker and members of the House of Assembly for their support across party lines.
The journey to Enugu’s greatness has begun. Tomorrow is here!