By Emma Una, CALABAR

THE Cross River State Government has declared that its 2024 budget caters to the needs of everyone in the state to make room for better living standards.

Mr Otu Ita, the Special Adviser to Governor Bassey Otu on Budget stated this on Wednesday while reviewing the state’s 2024 budget tagged “People First Budget’.

He said the governor sent an estimate of N250,000,000,000 to the State House of Assembly but this was increased to N296,000,000,000 because the estimate for gratuities to retired civil servants and persons living with disabilities was low and since the government is focused on meeting the needs of every segment of society, the Assembly was mandated to beef up the budget.

“The target of this year’s budget is to ensure that there are better schools, health care delivery centres in all communities across the state, social amenities are made functional to meet the demands of the people”

Otu said the budget capital expenditure is N216,000,000,000, while recurrent expenditure is N80,000,000,000.

“Activities directly affecting the lives of people living in Cross River State would be improved such that no one is left behind We would do this by ensuring that wealth is evenly distributed with no section of our population cheated”

He declared that all schools in the state would be equipped with desks and those in agriculture would be provided grants, equipment, and facilities to facilitate high produce and yields in all crops in the state.

He said N74,625,000,000 from revenue is expected from the Federal Allocation; N34,703,000,000 from independent revenue within the state such as taxes, levies and receipts,

All revenues, taxes and levies payable to the state have been captured in the budget and any revenue not in the budget is illegal and should not be paid taxpayers should be observant to ensure that what they are asked to pay is legal” Otu asserted

“We have no intentions to increase revenue and the budget caters for the salary increment and payment of gratuity to retired civil servants”

The budget review he said is to give the public the opportunity to have a first hand view of the budget and how it relates or affects them..