BY FELIX JEREMIAH, YENAGOA
Bayelsa State Government has declared N2 billion as the total amount available in its coffers after deduction of recurrent and capital expenditures spanning three months.
Making this known during the monthly transparency initiative briefing for the months of April, May and June, 2014, the State governor, Seriake Dickson, through his Deputy, Retired Rear Admiral Gboribiogha John Jonah said the declaration of the state’s monthly income and expenditure was in line with the administration’s policy of transparency and accountability.
In his breakdown, Governor Dickson disclosed that, as at the end of April 2014, the state posted a balance of N14.87bn including balance brought forward from the month of March, 2014, which stood at
N7.263bn.
At the end of May, the state had a balance of N14.621bn including N8.938bn brought forward from the month April, 2014. Reiterating his administration’s commitment to probity and accountability, the Governor in his breakdown disclosed that at the end of June the State posted N2bn after necessary deductions, which include bank loan re-payment and services, recurrent and capital expenditure.
Describing the economy of the state as stable, compared to other states in the country, the governor said, his administration is living up to its billings, which include provision of infrastructure, human capacity building and improving state’s internally generated revenue.
Federation account allocation committee (FAAC) and funds from other sources, including Internally Generated Revenue, (IGR) for the month of April stood at N18, 472,594,241.30k.
Governor Dickson, who noted that salaries for civil servants over the three months amounted to over N11.66bn, said that of political appointees was N1.327bn, while payment of the N18,000 minimum wage arrears for civil servants came up to N377.77 million.
According to him, statutory allocation for the three months was over N12.45bn, but there was no fund from the excess crude account and augmentation during the period.
On derivation from the federation account, he explained that N32.569 was received while government got N1.851bn as proceeds from value added tax for the three months.
