THE East New Britain Provincial Government has passed a record of K618 million budget for this year (2023) aimed at consolidating growth achieved in the past few years.
Governor and chairman of finance Michael Marum when handing down the budget last week stated that the budget includes former years, compared to the 2022 budget appropriation of K398 million.
Governor Marum said this year’s budget is mainly driven by significant increase in the un-user funds, the high turnover of former years funds and the lasted issue of warrants from the National Government last year.
He explained that this was further compounded with the IFMS malware attack and the subsequent measures in the form of financial instructions for the province to adhere to.
He said the slight increase is in the national grants, internal revenue and Public Improvement Programme (PIP).
Marum told the Provincial Executive Council that the K618, 107, 790 consists of national government grants of K340, 933,300, provincial internal revenue K101,200,000, the District Development Authority budget of K140, 404, 090 and Local Level Government budget of K35, 570,400.
He said East New Britain Provincial internal revenue for 2023 is forecasted to be K101, 200,000 which comprises of K31,000,000 as recurrent and K34,000,000 as development including former years of K36, 200,000.
For the 2023 expenditure Marum told the assembly that the approach that this government will expedite the 2023 budget is through the development pillars compared to previous budget expenditure guidelines.
The following is the stated amount as per the development pillars, making optimal use of available resource at K52 million, promoting economic development through primary and secondary processing at K40 million, encouraging community participation and promoting family life at K30 million, making rural life more attractive at K27 million, lessening disparities at K70 million, improving the effectiveness of LLGs K80 million and minimising law and order K6 million.
Governor Marum outlined other key investment areas such as the provincial headquarters, special economic zones, tourism, downstream processing law and order and agriculture and commodities support, road and others.
He urged district MPs for a good working relationship to complement one another and not to compete against each other stating that ENB is on the move again.
