Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Ben Akabueze who made the disclosure during the annual ministerial press briefing in Lagos said the contractors were dealt with in the last one year.
He explained that the 77 contracts were worth N2, 382, 589, 669.86 Kobo adding that the ministry sanctioned them by refusing to issue contracts pre-payment certificates to those involved as a result of anomaly in the certificates or unsatisfactory job execution.
He said that contracts exceeding N500,000 require certification by the Monitoring and Evaluation Department of the ministry.
Akabueze said the ministry also issued pre-payment certificates in the sum of N55,859,363, 995.33 kobo to contractors fA r 1,097 projects executed in the last one year adding that 304 direct labour pre-payment certificate totaling N4, 915, 255, 425.16 were confirmed by the various ministerial departments.
He explained that the 2014 budget of N489.690 billion was made up of N255.025 billion capital and N234.665 billion recurrent expenditure, stressing that it was prepared in line with the policy direction of the state government to meet the yearnings and aspirations of the good people of Lagos State.
The commissioner said the zero-deficit budget is focused on the completion of on-going projects, settlement of outstanding debts and give priority attention to the maintenance of public assets.
“The capital to recurrent ratio is 52:48 for 2014 as against 58:42 in 2013”, he said and attributed the drop to maintenance cost arising from the completion of projects like the Lekki-Ikoyi Link bridge and others.
