Ogun Denies N200billion Loan

The Ogun state Commissioner for Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has denied reports that the state government has obtained a N200 billion loan to develop the state’s infrastructure, explaining that it was not possible for any government to obtain such an amount as a loan without going through certain processes.

She made the explanation during the ministerial briefing marking the second year anniversary of the current administration at the press centre of the Governor’s Office in Abeokuta, the state capital on Friday.

According to her, out of the N16.6 billion bank loan approved by the State House of Assembly in this year’s budget, the state government had only taken N7billion.

She stated that the financial re-engineering being put in place by the state government has started yielding positive results as the state has been able to reduce its debt burden profile of N87 billion, inherited from the last administration to about N61 billion.

Mrs. Adeosun explained further that the state government had been repaying loans incurred for financing current infrastructural projects and paying off parts of the debts inherited, pointing out that pension arrears and other staff claims stood at N9.32billion, having paid N3.86billion out of the N13. 18billion it was in December 2011.

While giving a clean bill of health of the state finances, the Commissioner, however noted that proactive measures are being put in place to increase the monthly internally generated revenue from its current N3 billion to N5 billion

According to her, the Finance Ministry had developed a medium term financial model to grow the state’s debt in proportion to the growth of its Internally Generated Revenue. She declared that the focus of the administration is to grow its current average N3billion Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to N5billion.

She recalled two years ago, the state’s average monthly IGR stood at about N750million, saying that government had successfully grown this to N3billion owing partly to the visible massive developmental programmes embarked upon across the State which made people who ordinarily would not have paid their taxes do so voluntarily.

Speaking on revenue monitoring, she stated that her Ministry had introduced the cashless revenue collection policy in all state-owned tertiary institutions which she said had resulted in an average of 195 percent increase in reported revenue, adding that same had been replicated in the Ministry of Forestry which also resulted to 36percent increase in its revenue in the first two months of this year.

Saving N100million monthly by biometric exercise

The biometric data capture exercise which the state conducted on its workforce last year helped it save the sum of N100million monthly which would have been paid to ghost workers and those who should have retired from the civil service.

The Commissioner for Finance, said government embarked on the exercise which captured 30,035 civil servants and 18,478 SUBEB staff to ensure value for money and probity, having realized that payroll related expenses gulped over 64% of the State’s total recurrent expenditure in 2012.