The Cross River State Governor, Professor Ben Ayade, on Tuesday 7th January 2020, singed the 2020 appropriation bill into law, which is a total of N1.1 trillion naira, earlier presented to the State Assembly.
Governor Ben Ayade while signing the 2020 Budget, commended the state House of Assembly for beating the deadline of passing the appropriation bill before the 31st December 2019, saying:
“In the 2020 appropriation bill, I have just signed into law, we have developed factories that have matured to a point where you need only operating capital to have them start commercial production. Indeed It will be the end of suffering in Cross River as many of these factories are ready to employ our young people.
Cross River state has 33 industries in four years and you can point at them. So, I want to assure all of you that this budget of N1.1 trillion is something we can achieve, something we can accomplish,” he said.
The budget as presented by Governor Ben Ayade to the State Assembly, which was a budget he tagged as Olimpotic meristemasis, was pegged at N1,100,167,507.09
Giving a breakdown of the budget, Ayade said N911 billion representing 82% of the estimates will be for capital estimates while N188 billion representing 17.2% will be spent on recurrent expenditure.
He said N44 billion was allocated to the health sector, N38 billion for education, N22 billion for agriculture while N85 billion will go to the New Cities Project.
On taxation, the governor said no nation taxes its people to prosperity and so daily taxes will be abolished for low-income earners including traders and civil servants who earn below N100,000 per month will be exempted from taxes.
He said a flat monthly tax will rather be paid by low-income earners while the government will continue to legalise hawking by creating some hawking bases in the state to assist low-income earners.
He said the tax regime in the state beginning from next year will become softer as a means of boosting the income of low-income earners and high-income earners will be the ones who pay more tax.
He added that agro-based industries under construction in the state will come on stream next year and the government hopes to earn about N380 billion from the industries.
He said the budget looks unachievable but his administration is determined to actualise it and sought the cooperation of the legislature.