Lagos Generates N140 Billion By Kazeem Ugbodaga

The Lagos State Government generated N140 billion in the last six months.

Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Ben Akabueze, disclosed at the weekend that the state government recorded a whopping N140 billion in the first six months of this year as part of its budget performance.

An analysis of the budget showed that the state government projected N202.5 billion to be generated in the first half of this year, with N101.25 billion to be generated quarterly. In the first half, N140 billion out of the projected N202.5 billion was generated by the government, which represented approximately 69 percent performance.

The first half budget performance fell short by N62.5 billion, which represented approximately 31 percent setback of the projected target of N202.5 billion for the 2009 fiscal year.

However, Governor Babatunde Fashola, while assessing the budget performance for the second quarter of the year said the state recorded 68 percent performance, representing N68.85 billion generated out of the N101.25 billion projected for the quarter.

He stated that despite the impact of economic meltdown, the state still recorded success in its budget performance, while he expressed satisfaction with the performance.

“Although this was a slight increase against the budget performance in the first quarter but in terms of the performance between this period last year, there is a four percent increase and when you look at this performance in terms of the difficult economic terrain, I think our government has done very well,” he said.

The governor stated that the budget performance was also being assessed in terms of the impact on the grassroots especially as its thrust is on poverty alleviation and economic growth.

“This we have done through the various infrastructure renewal programmes. We have looked at the impact of the budget and we have seen very encouraging results in job creation, especially at the grassroots level.In terms of direct employment in the public service, we have employed 6,114 people into the public service directly and this is largely made up of health and education workers at the lower level which are people that desperately needed to work in terms of direct employment.

“But outside the public service, we have created 52,665 jobs from so many activities such as field training, micro credit fund, business support and so many others. Some of these people are also already employing other people and this is at the grassroots and there are young graduate who have come out of schools and benefited from these programmes.

“In terms of the indirect jobs that we have created, from figures collected as at June this year, we have a little over 98,000 people who are working at various contractors’ sites as sub-contractors, as employees to people who have taken major contracts from us in building schools, drainage channels, hospitals, roads, bridges, cleaning up the streets and participating in our PSP programme and others. Not only on the macro level has the budget done well, it has also done well at the micro level, giving jobs, putting food on people’s tables,” he stated.