Lagos State governor, Bababjide Sanwo-Olu, on Tuesday presented the Year 2021 Budget at the Lagos State House of Assembly Chambers, Alausa Ikeja.

He presented a budget estimate of N1,155,022,413,005.82, tagged, ‘budget of rekindled hope’.

During the budget presentation, the governor told the Assembly that he intends to repeal the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension Law 2007), which provides for payment of pension and other entitlements to former Governors and their Deputies.

Sanwo-Olu said his administration negotiated and was able to save about N12 billion from the restructuring of the existing internal loans owed by the State Government.

According to the Governor, through deliberate programmes, the government was able to restructure some of the existing internal loans from 18 per cent to 12 per cent, while some of the loans were restructured from double digits to single digit of 6 per cent and 9 per cent.

“Through the restructuring, we were able to save about N12 billion,” the Governor said.

The governor stated that the 2021 budget has a total revenue of N962.528 billion and a total Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, of N795,744 billion.

He added that the budget has a Capital Expenditure of 703.272 billion and a Recurrent Expenditure of N451.750 billion.

According to him, the 2021 budget would focus on youth employment, security, youth engagement and social work, among others.

On youth empowerment, Sanwo-Olu said it has become expedient to leverage the state’s developmental efforts by focusing on sectors with job creating potential like Agriculture, Construction, Technology and Security.

“We are set to improve the economic conditions and social safety needed for our youth and all hardworking Lagosians to flourish. We are committing resources to sectors that need to grow for our people to become self-reliant and economically empowered.

“Consequently, for the agricultural sector, our food security plan has a cumulative budget of N22.21 billion while we are committing a cumulative budgetary provision of N311.43 billion to infrastructure: this will cover direct intervention through the Ministries of Works and Infrastructure, Water front, Transportation, the Judiciary, our Schools and Seed Capital of N15 billion for The Rebuild Lagos Trust Fund.

“This does not include the value to be created from executing the rail lines (both Red and Blue) recently approved by the Lagos State House of Assembly. To continue to drive our digitisation strategy, we have committed a total of N37.37 billion investment in technology, while in the environment and health services we have committed a total of N48.28 billion and N111.94 billion respectively.

“In line with our urgent need to light up Lagos we will begin a set of initiatives in the energy sector to ensure the Lagos economy is supported by power one community at a time. To this we have committed a total of N32.58billion in the 2021 budget,” he said.