ABEOKUTA - Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State has ordered that the revenue profile of government agencies must reflect the realities of the current times.

He said this at the opening of the state’s 2008 Treasury Board Meeting and Budget Retreat, which opened on Monday in Abeokuta.

“The revenue profile of each of the agencies must reflect the realities of the times.
“Henceforth, emphasis will be placed on value for money in government expenditure.

“We remain committed to our target of meeting our expenditure, which currently stands at N2.1 billion, from our internally-generated revenue by the time our administration leaves office,” the governor said.

Daniel recalled that at the inception of his administration, “recurrent expenditure was less than about N1 billion.

Salaries at that time was about N600 million and when you put all the other recurrent into it, with less than a billion naira, the state was surviving and as at that time, the internally-generated revenue of the state was less than N200m.

“For our state to be healthy, we must move our internally-generated revenue to the stage that it can sustain our recurrent expenditure.

“The internally-generated revenue now is averaging about N700 million per month, which eventually mean that if our recurrent

expenditure has stayed at the level it was in 2003, we would have shouted Eureka .’’
Daniel said that the state’s recurrent expenditure had moved from less than N1 billion to well over N2 billion currently.

“So it means therefore that for us to achieve our objectives, the internally generated revenue also now has to move from about N700 million to N2 billion plus.

“This means that we must all redouble our efforts toward enhancing the revenue profiles of our various ministries, departments and agencies.

“We must continue to ensure fiscal discipline and financial prudence, compliance to the rules and due process and conduct of government businesses in a manner that ensures accountability and transparency.

“Even though artificially-created distractions abound, especially on the political front, we will remain focused in our mission of creating an economically-viable and politically-stable Ogun State,” NAN quotes Daniel as saying.

The four-day budget retreat ends tomorrow.