By Festus Ahon, Asaba

Delta State government has reiterated its commitment to the provision of funding for its ongoing projects across the state to avoid creating room for project abandonment.

The State Commissioner for Economic Planning, Dr. Barry Gbe who gave the assurance during the 2021 Pre-Budget meeting with MDAs, CSOs and other stakeholders, noted that the state government, while implementing the slight shift in focus due to the experiences of COVID-19 pandemic, would not lose sight of ongoing projects and other existing commitment which he said, must be budgeted for in the 2021 budget.

He told MDAs to pursue their contractors so as to complete any project given to them before the end of the year.

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On measures taken to respond to the COVID -19 pandemic, Gbe said Governor Ifeanyi Okowa had set up a committee to review the budget as it had become global best practices for nations and business entities to look at their budget and restructure it.

Saying that the revised budget laid emphasis on Covid-19 responsive expenditures, he said the review led to the reduction of the budget from N395 billion to N282 billion.

Gbe explained that some expenditure budgets for some MDAs that were Covid-19 responsive were increased while some MDAs budget size were dropped.

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On the economic update and focus for 2020 budget, the Commissioner said that the State Government had to slow down on some capital expenditures in order to provide allowances for front line workers, purchase of medication, medical equipment, drugs, palliatives for the pro-poor in the society and other social security interventions.

He said: “The focus of government would be on social investment programmes because that is where we have seen that there is so much negative impact of the Covid-19 and it is a short cut to reaching to the citizens that we govern.

“Some investment programmes that would involve cash transfer would continue, we will increase the size of the widows we are paying across all the wards in the state by 40 widows per ward, gender-sensitive programme, support to households, vulnerable and persons living with disabilities, the girl child, Ministry of Youths and other agencies domiciled in government house.”

Vanguard