Lagos Assembly passes 2017 budget

The Lagos state House of Assembly on Tuesday passed the 2017 budget proposal of N812. 99 billion for the state.
The sum of N305, 28 billion was earmarked for recurrent expenditure while capital expenditure got N507.82 billion of the budget as passed by the House.
Governor Akinwunmi Ambode had on November 29, 2016 presented an Appropriation Bill of N812.99 billion to the House for approval. The House consequently, on the December 1, directed all its standing committees to commence work on it by inviting all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to defend their proposed allocations.
The passage of the budget on Tuesday was sequel to the adoption of the report and recommendations by its Committee on Budget and Economic Planning presented by its Chairman, Hon. Rotimi Olowo.
Olowo, who said the state was able to achieve 71 percent budget performance in spite of the economic recession in the country, explained that the state would embark on progressive taxation which would bring more people into the tax net and make the wealthy in the state to pay more.
The lawmaker however, said there was a need to comply with the Appropriation (Amendment) (Re-ordering) Law, 2016 to release funds to relevant MDAs.
The budget committee chairman further added that there was a need for the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget to carry out a review of the 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) of MDAs before making allocation for year 2018 proposed budget estimate.
This, according to him, would guard against duplication of expenditures (capital and recurrent) by MDAs.
In the house final approval, the sum of N650 million goes to 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 the local government election and related matters.
Overhead for Security/Emergency Interventions was however, reduced from N500 million to N400 million and N1 billion was allocated as capital expenditure for the ministry of Special Duties and Inter governmental Relations.
The Assembly approved a sum of N20.43 billion for LAMATA, N2 billion for Ferry Services, N4 billion for  maintenance/Repair of roads (Recurrent) while the capital vote head for Road Maintenance rose from N790.10 million to N1.79 billion.
The House also raised the overhead cost of Lagos State House of Assembly Service Commission from N210 million to N252 million.
The House also approved N10 billion for the State Infrastructure Intervention Fund, while it approved N159.55 million for state Electricity Board.
The Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, took voice votes on each sectoral allocation on the Appropriation Bills before the final approval is given to each and the House went ahead to pass the budget.