Speaker of Cross River State House of Assembly, Eteng Williams.
PATRICK ABANG, Calabar –
The Speaker of Cross River State House of Assembly, Bar. Eteng William, has given reasons why the state budget size was increase from N276,279,960,667,35 as presented by the governor Ben Ayade to N54,505,535,313,25
The Speaker, who presided over the Committee of the whole House after the budget passed third reading, stated that soon after the Governor Ben Ayade presented the budget, TETFund, agreed to support Cross River State Government with fund’s amounting to N40billion to be directed at the following projects: Tertiary Cancer Research Centre, Tertiary Orthopedic Centre, University Library for British Canadian School and Tertiary Tourism Centre.
According to Hon. Williams, approval for procurement of critical hospital equipment like Pet Scan Linear Accelerator and Cyclotron were received after the budget had been presented by the governor.
Hon. Eteng also emphasized that the items will be bought at the current exchange rate which brought in additional N4.5billion.
“Finally, it was discovered that the initial provision ofN14billion was not enough for debt servicing and debt refinancing, additional N20billion has therefore been used to augment this provision” he started.
Earlier the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Hon. Sunday Achunekang while reading the report of the House Committee on Finance and Appropriation on the State Budget Estimate for 2022, said: “In view of the fact that the governor’s presentations represent the first reading of the bill, it was scheduled and read the second time on Thursday 25th November 2021 after a robust deliberation by members, the bill was therefore referred to the Committee on Appropriation for detailed scrutiny and to report back within three weeks”
Achunekang said in all, Schedule 1 Personal and overhead cost stood at #11, 965, 354,107.96, Schedule 2 Capital expenditure , N225,746,261,606.98 while Statutory Expenditure was peg at #9, 802, 919, 600,.31, bringing a grand total of the 2022 estimate to N354,505,535,313.25
