Borno State government has won four awards in World Bank’s State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme for budget performance in 2022.
The award aims to strengthen the fiscal sustainability, transparency and accountability in the 36 states for implementing yearly budgets.
In a breakdown of the assented 2023 budget, yesterday, in Maiduguri, the Commissioner for Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Adamu Lawan, disclosed: “The Budget of Continuity for Sustainability is N235.33 billion, while its recurrent and capital expenditures stood at N104.25 billion and N131.1 billion respectively.”
According to Lawan, there is also expected rise in local revenue collections due to continuous payment of ground rents.
“The enforcement of the payment of ground rents has also improved the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by 25 per cent,” he said, noting that the 2023 budget was, however, less than the 2022 budget by 14.6 per cent.
On the awards, the commissioner said the four-year programme started in May 2019 with the aim of strengthening fiscal sustainability, revenue mobilisation and debt sustainability.
He added that the three fiscal measures prevented financial crisis in budget implementation.
“The strengthening of fiscal sustainability, revenue mobilisation and debt sustainability has increased the fiscal space for productive spending,” adding that they would support growth and public service delivery.
At the end of the programme, Lawan noted that the state government won four different awards on the SFTAS.
He noted: “The awards include an excellent performer efficiency of public expenditure, very good performer on overall SFTAS, top performer on improvement on critical DLIs, top performer on improvement on original DLIs and very good performer on debt sustainability,” he said.
