Benue Assembly passes N170.8bn supplementary budget

The Benue State House of Assembly, on Wednesday, passed the 2024 supplementary budget of N170,894,473,135 billion.

This brought the 2024 budget a total of N396,621,868,343bn.

The initial approved budget by the house was N225,727,395,206.97bn.

With the passed supplementary budget, the total recurrent expenditure for the year now stands at N155,647,410,359 billion while capital expenditure remains at N240,974,457,983 billion.

The House urged the state budget and planning commission to consult with Public Sector Entities before revising any budget, ensuring their input is considered.

The lawmakers also urged the State Ministry of Finance to ensure prompt release of budgetary approvals to MDAs for improved performance in their operations.

They called on the state government to ensure that MDAs maintain their appropriate nomenclature to avoid role conflict that may affect the proper codification of the State Budget at the Nigeria Governor’s Forum.

Earlier, the chairman, House Standing Committee on Appropriation, Cephas Dyako, while presenting findings of the committee said there was an extra-budgetary expenditure on recurrent expenditure and overhead cost by Public Sector Entities and stated that most MDAs performed poorly due to the non-release of funds.

The Clerk of the house, Bernard Nule, accordingly read the bill for the third time and was thereafter passed into law.