The Plateau State House of Assembly has passed into law the 2017 appropriation bill of N139 billion into law.
The House unanimously passed the bill into law after its Standing Committee on Appropriation submitted its report at the plenary.
It would be recalled that Governor Simon Lalong, had in December, 2016, presented the 2017 budget of over N132 billion.
However, the House had increased the budget size from N132 billion to N139 billion, hence an increase of over N6 billion in the budget size.
Of the total budget, over N70 billion was appropriated for capital expenditure, while over N69 billion is for recurrent expenditure.
Explaining the rationale for the increase, Chairman of the House Appropriation Committee, Hon. Yahaya Adamu, said some key agencies were being underfunded, hence the need for their budget to be increased.
He argued that since the state had been emphatic on generating revenue, there was need for relevant revenue generating agencies to be well funded for it to generate more money into government’s coffers.
“We have increased the budget size by over N6 billion to enable critical ministries, departments and agencies to function well.
“Since more emphasis is laid on revenue generation, we feel MDAs saddled with generating funds for government should be well equipped.
“We also feel that concerted efforts be made by government to ensure prompt release of funds to critical agencies to enable them perform optimally, ” he said.
The House also called on government to lift embargo on employment as most MDAs in the state were under staffed, which had affected their functionality.
It also charged government to post personnel to some of the newly established agencies in the state, to make them more functional.
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