Lagos Assembly Passes 2017 Budget Into Law

The Lagos State House of Assembly tuesday passed the 2017 budget proposal of N812. 99 billion presented by the state Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, into law.The assembly passed the sum of

N305. 28 billion as total recurrent expenditure and N507.82 billion as the total capital expenditure for the year ending December 31, 2017.Ambode had on November 29, 2016, presented an appropriation bill of N812.99 billion to the lawmakers for approval.The assembly had on December 1, 2016, after receiving the budget, directed all its standing committees to invite all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to defend their budgets.The passage followed the assembly’s adoption of the report and recommendations by its Committee on Budget and Economic Planning presented by the Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Rotimi Olowo. Olowo said the state was able to achieve 71 percent budget performance in spite of the economic recession in the country.The lawmaker said the state would embark on progressive taxation which would bring more people into the tax net and make the rich pay more.As parts of the recommendations of the committee, the lawmaker said there was need to comply with the Appropriation (Amendment) (Re-ordering) Law, 2016 to release funds to relevant MDAs.Olowo added that there was a need for the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget to carry out budget review of 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) of MDAs before allocating envelopes for 2018 proposed budget estimate.He said that this would guide against duplication of expenditures (Capital and Recurrent) by MDAs. The assembly approved N650 million for education, N350 million for agriculture, N360 million for LASIEC, while the capital expenditure of LASIEC was increased from N2.5 billion to N3 billion to cater for election matters.