The Cross River State Government is to deploy the $20.4million grant it got from the World Bank funded States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability programme of the Federal Government into funding its 2021 N281billion budget.
This was disclosed by the state Commissioner for Finance, Asuquo Ekpenyong Jr, in Calabar last Friday at a news briefing.
He said since the thrust of the budget was empowerment and employment of youths, especially in the rural areas, the grant would be channelled there.
On how the state got the grant, Ekpenyong said, “Cross River State met the eligibility criteria for the 2019 programme and was accordingly pre-qualified for the detailed annual performance assessment of all qualified Nigerian states under the States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability programme.”
He said the assessment exercise was conducted in September 2020 by the Independent Verification Assessors from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation and JFR Consulting and it showed that the state achieved six Disbursement Linked Indicators out of the nine applicable for 2019, and three out of the three for the 2020 additional financing.
The commissioner said the report noted that Cross River State had strengthened its internally generated revenue collection, implemented biometric verification to reduce payroll fraud, improved its procurement practices for increased transparency, strengthened its public debt management and fiscal responsibility framework, improved debt sustainability and instituted a more transparent budgeting process over the course of the fiscal year.