The Akwa Ibom House of Assembly on Friday passed the state’s 2022 Appropriation Bill of N586.88 billion.

Made up of N261.96 billion recurrent expenditure and N324.91 billion capital expenditure, the budget has an increase of N4.77 billion on the initial size.

Recall that Governor Udom Emmanuel had on October 25, presented before the state house a total budget of N582.12 billion for the 2022 fiscal year.

The budget is christened “Budget of Re-defining Standards.”

Earlier, the Chairman House Committee on Finance and Appropriation, Uduak Odudoh, said the committee adopted a participatory approach in the budgetary process.

Mr Odudoh said ministries, departments and agencies, nongovernmental organisations and other relevant publics were invited to a public hearing on the budget.

He said the house approved N1.81 billion increase in recurrent expenditure and N2.95 billion increase in capital expenditure, bringing the total increase to N4.77 billion.

He said the state government had been told to ensure prompt and commensurate release of funds to MDAs for execution of projects and programmes.

The Speaker, Aniekan Bassey, in his remarks, commended the house committee on finance and appropriation for the quick deliberations on the budget.

The speaker said that by the passage, the commencement date for the budget implementation would be January 1, 2022, and directed the Clerk of the House, Mandu Umoren, to send a clean copy of the bill to the governor for assent.

(NAN)