Taraba budgets N4.99 bn for Agriculture in 2022.

Taraba budgets N4.99 bn for  Agriculture in 2022.

Emmanuel Awari-Jalingo

Taraba State Government has budgeted the sum of N4.99 billion for Agriculture  in 2022.

The state Commissioner for budget and planning, Solomon Elisha, disclose this while giving a breakdown of the state’s 2022 approved budget estimate of N149.78 billion.

The 2022 budget whose implementation is expected to commence this month in compliance with the January to December budget cycle has an opening balance of N350 million.

The state is also expected to spend the sum of N78.07 billion on recurrent expenditure while capital expenditure is projected to gulp N71.71 billion.

Elisha said the 2022 budget would be funded from the state’s expected revenue.

According to him, “33% of the expected revenue would come from statutory allocation (N50.66 billion), 12% from Value Added Tax,VAT (N19 billion), 21.50% from Loans (N32.23 billion), 12.24% from Aids and Grants (N18.3 billion), 6.66% from IGR (10.31 billion) and 12.60% from FG Support Facilities (N18.85 billion).

“In this regard, there is a need for all hands to be on deck to explore the abundant untapped resources to actualize our dream of becoming the leading economy in the North East sub-region.”

He urged all Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, of the state government to comply with government’s directive of blocking leakages and remitting all IGR.

"The Focus of 2022 Budget is to complete all ongoing projects even in the wake of the present economic downturn. Being mindful of the above, we carefully tailored our budget to a realistic estimate of N149,784,896,396.82 and judiciously allocated to both Recurrent and Capital Expenditure on the ratio of 53.47 respectively - he said.