The Anambra House of Assembly has passed a bill to regulate the financial management of the state to ensure all revenue, expenditures, assets and liabilities of government are managed efficiently to meet current and future challenges.
The assembly passed the bill after third reading on the floor of the House on Wednesday.
The lawmakers took turns to perfect some corrections in the 90-clause bill before it was finally passed by the House.
The Speaker, Mr Uche Okafor, conducted a voice vote on each of the sections of the bill before the passage.
Okafor said, “having considered the third reading of a Bill for a Law to Regulate the Financial Management of Anambra state to ensure all revenue, expenditures, assets and liabilities of government are managed efficiently to meet current and future challenges of the state and to Provide for other related Matters 2019, the bill is hereby passed.’’
The Speaker after the passage of the bill, thanked his colleagues for their hard work.
He, therefore, directed the Clerk of the House, Mr Pius Udo, to forward a clean copy of the bill to Gov. Willie Obiano for his assent.
According to the bill, the Commissioner responsible for budget matters shall commence the annual planning process by holding budget meetings with relevant public stakeholders and financial management agencies.
It also states that the Accountant-General of the state shall publish quarterly financial statements of the state for the three quarters not later than 25 days from the end of the quarter.
“The Commissioner responsible for budget matters shall present a quarterly report to the state Executive Council not later than six weeks after the end of each of the three quarters in each financial year.
“The report shall contain details of the performance of government and the entire public sector for the period covered by the report in comparison with the proposal in the annual plan and estimate for that financial year.
“The Governor may table supplementary budget before the House of Assembly provided that additional revenue outside of the budget had accrued.
“The state supplementary budget shall provide for supplementary fund required due to significant and unforeseeable economic and financial event affecting the fiscal target set by the annual budget or unavoidable expenditure, ” the bill stated.
