Soludo budgets N606.9b for 2025 fiscal year

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By Madu Obi

Anambra State governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo has presented a budget proposal of N606.99 billion to the state House of Assembly for the 2025 fiscal year.

The amount represents a 48. percent increase .compared to the 2024 budget of N410,132,225,272.

Details show that the recurrent expenditures account for N139.5 billion, a growth of 45.0%, while capital expenditure is N467.5 billion , a growth of 48.9%.

The capital budget constitutes 77% of the total budget size, while recurrent expenditures account for 23%, the same ratios as for the 2024 budget.

The budget deficit is estimated at N148.3 billion, which is 24% of the budget compared to 30% in the 2024 budget.

Soludo said that as in the 2024 budget, the deficit is expected to be funded through revenue growth or borrowing from financial institutions.

He said that so far in both 2023 and 2024, the state did not borrowed to finance budget deficits.

He said: "Depending on the execution in 2025, we may still not borrow to fund the deficit. Relative to 2024, several key sectors are seeing significant increases: the administrative sector by 45.5%; the economic sector by 40.1%; the judiciary sector by 51.3%; the social sector by 82.7%; education by 101.4%; health by 57.1%; and Infrastructure investment by 38.9%."

The governor said that despite the macroeconomic challenges, his administration has remained focused on the ball—delivering on all the five fingers of the Solution Agenda.

"We are working hard, rejigging and strengthening our security architecture, and in some days and weeks to come, Ndi Anambra will fully experience our zero tolerance to criminality. Together as a people, we must bond together to defeat the criminals among us.

We have extended our free education policy up to Senior Secondary School Year 3 (SS3) and recruited an additional 3,115 teachers, bringing the total number of teachers recruited to 8,115.

There can be no school of any sort—smart or otherwise without qualitative teachers, and we have rightly prioritized the competitive recruitment of the best teachers for our schools", he stated.