Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, on Thursday presented the Year 2016 Budget proposal of N665.588billion to the House of Assembly, with a pledge that his administration would not only implement the budget faithfully, but also ensure that it worked in the best interest of Lagosians.
The governor, who christened the 2016 budget “The Peoples Budget”, said it was an improvement of 26 percent over the budgets of 2014 and 2015 respectively which stood at N489.6 Billion individually.
“The increase will enable our government to focus on the present challenges of security, traffic gridlock resolution including physical and social infrastructural development which has thrown up new challenges quite different from what we used to experience and have always known”, he said.
He said the 2016 budget, which is the first full budget of the present administration, would promote massive investment in security, transport and traffic management, physical and social infrastructural development and enhance job creation.
He said the intention of his government was to use the 2016 budget to strategically build new infrastructure, as well as maintain existing ones, adding that wealth and employment creation would also receive adequate attention in the course of the year.
Giving a breakdown of the budget figures, Governor Ambode put the recurrent expenditure at N278,909bn while capital expenditure stands at N383,678bn, explaining that the capital to recurrent ratio is 58:42 as against 51:49 in 2014 and 2015.
Governor Ambode also put the total revenue estimate for 2016 fiscal year at N542.873Billion, saying the balance of N119.714billion would be funded through deficit financing constituting 0.41 percent of the state GDP, based on 2016 budget alone and a cumulative debt to GDP ratio of about three percent.
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