The Delta State government has projected the sum of N936 billion as a 2025 budget proposal.
The state’s Commissioner for Economic Planning, Sunny Ekedayen, stated this at the opening ceremony of the Inter-ministerial Budget Meeting for the 2025 fiscal year on Tuesday in Asaba.
He said: “We have a budget envelope of N936 billion and that should ordinarily service the entire citizens of the state.
“And we are going to do the best in our ability through the instrument of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
“As a state, we know that projection can be very difficult. And you can hardly project for a month not to even talk of projecting for one year.
“To save ourselves from embarrassment, we are projecting the 2025 budget on Actual Receipts from June to date.
”Whatever that is coming as a way of revenue, and we think it can be sustained; that is what we are using to calculate our budget.
”As such, we were able to come up with a budget envelope of N936 billion.
”The 2024 budget is N735 billion, which means an increase of almost 30 percent for 2025.”
The commissioner, however, said though the proposal might be huge, the value of money had depreciated because of the current economic realities.
”What this amount of money can do now is probably less than what it could have done in the previous years,” the commissioner added.
Ekedayen urged the heads of MDAs to handle the budgeting process seriously and judiciously.