Fashola seeks reordering of 2014 budget over Ebola, LASU Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, has written to state House of Assembly to request for a re-ordering of the 2014 budget to address some exigent and pressing issues in the state. The budget re-ordering, according to the Governor, was necessary to meet demands for more public services, which are “sufficiently compelling and cannot wait until 2015”. Fashola’s letter, entitled ‘Year 2014 Budget Re-ordering of Priorities’, was read at plenary on Tuesday by Clerk of the Assembly, Segun Abiru. The re-ordering, if approved by the lawmakers, will take care of emerging issues like the recent reversal of Lagos State University (LASU) school fees policy. The Governor said the re-ordering “requires us to make provisions to cover LASU shortfall in projected revenues in order to service the school”. He also spoke of “the unanticipated but very urgent need to address the threat of the Ebola virus epidemic and also a need for counterpart funding request that enables us to access developmental funds to install solar power panels in 172 public schools and 11 primary health centres in the first phase”. The re-ordering, according to him, will not affect the original budget size of N489.69 billion “as we have discovered that there are still unutilised provisions by some MDAs, which may remain so till year end”. “Hence we are proposing to move such provisions to where they are more urgently needed to enable the state government address pressing needs in the areas identified above and other areas like security, housing. “The re-ordering is proposed from Capital Expenditure Provisions of 10 Agencies with a total value of N9.960 billion. “This re-ordering is to urgently address some of the critical unbudgeted expenditure requests by various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). “We have received request aggregating to the sum of N79.302 billion but will clearly be unable to accommodate most of these request this year,” Fashola added.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 09:05:11 +0000