Kogi House of Assembly last week passed the state’s 2013 Appropriation Bill of N132.7 billion into law. Reports says that the passage was sequel to the adoption of the house Committee on Finance and Appropriation’s report on the bill at a plenary session in Lokoja. The house, on adoption of the report, dissolved into a committee on the whole to consider the bill clause-by-clause.

This was followed by the second, third readings and final approval by the Speaker, Alhaji Momoh-Jimoh Lawal. The bill is N1.8 billion higher than the N130.9 billion presented to the house by the state Governor, Capt. Idris Wada, on December 4, 2012.

The committee Chairman, Malam Haruna Idoko (PDP-Idah), said the increase was in the areas of youth empowerment and energy.

“The provisions in the appropriation bill for these sectors were discovered to be grossly inadequate and in our own wisdom, we added money so that the people of the state can benefit,” he said. According to the bill, tagged “Budget of Transformation”, N65.5 billion will be spent on recurrent services while N67.2 billion will be expended on capital programmes.

Governor Wada, in his budget speech in 2012, had said that N78.2 billion was expected from recurrent resources while N52.7 billion would be derived from capital receipts out of the estimated revenues projected for 2013. On sectoral allocations, transport sector took the lion share of N20.49 billion, followed by general administration with N13.85 billion, while education took the third place with N7.21 billion. Others are health, N4.41 billion; water, N5 billion; agriculture, N2.78 billion; housing, N1.75 billion; electrification, N1.34 billion; information/sports/social development, N1.15 billion while manufacturing sector got N920 million.