By Peter Okutu

ABAKALIKI—Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State, yesterday, presented to the state House of Assembly an appropriation bill of N101, 154, 646.000 for the 2016 fiscal year.

The bill tagged: ‘Budget of Divine Actualisation,’ set aside N62, 396,750,000 for capital expenditure representing 61.68 per cent of the budget while N38,757,896,030.00 was set aside for recurrent expenditure being 38 per cent of the total estimate.

The estimate is slightly above that of 2015 which was N96.52 billion. The economic sector got N36.890 billion the largest chunk, being 59  per cent of the estimate of which the governor said was with the basic aim of tackling challenges in the roads, water, electricity, agriculture, education, commerce and industrial sectors.

The Ministry of Works got the highest allocation within the economic sector with N25  billion, representing 67.8 per cent; Ministry of Water Resources, N3 billion; and Commerce and Industry, N2 billion. Three other ministries shared N6.89 billion being 18.7 per cent of the budget for the sector.

The social sector got a total of N10.304 billion representing 16.5 per cent of the capital budget with education having an allocation of N5.909 billion, health N2.445 billion and others N1.95 billion.