By Festus Ahon

ASABA—DELTA State House of Assembly, yesterday, passed the state 2019 Appropriation bill with an increase of N23.3 billion to the initial budget of N367 billion presented by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa to the House, bringing the budget to N390.3 billion.

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The passage of the 2019 Appropriation bill followed the presentation of the report of the House Committee on Finance and Appropriations at plenary presided over by the Speaker, Mr Sheriff Oborevwori.

Presenting the report, the Chairman, House Committee on Finance and Appropriations, Erhiatake Ibori-Suenu  said the governor had on October 17,2018 presented the 2019 proposed budget of N367 billion to the House with N209 billion for capital expenditure while recurrent expenditure had N157 billion.

She said after careful evaluation of the submissions of the various sub-committees of the House and budget defence of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, the Finance and Appropriations had to return a budget size of N390.3 billion.

Ibori -Suenu said with the increase of the budget size, the capital expenditure now stood at N233.3 billion while the recurrent expenditure was now N157 billion.

She said the Committee observed that the 2019 Appropriation bill took into consideration the new account code in compliance with the current international Public Sector Accounting Standards as well as the necessary micro economic framework with national inflation, oil production benchmark, international exchange rate and the medium term expenditure framework.