By Okey Maduforo Awka.
Gov Charles Soludo of Anambra has described as fake news that he borrowed the sum of N245 Billion to fund the 2024 budget of the state.
Soludo further contended that he cannot go to borrow the sum of N245 billion when he is running a deficit of N121 Billion for the 2024 appropriation.
“The report about Anambra planning to borrow the sum of N245 billion to fund the year 2024 budget is fake news and I didn’t know where they got that story from ”
“Let’s make it clear that I have a view about borrowing and every enterprise, private or public or whatever that wants to scale up activities must look at the funds , look at the options, look at the opportunities and cost of those funds and time value for money”
“It might make sense to borrow today provide goods and services and tomorrow the economy will generate recourses to pay back ”
“Let’s put it clear, this administration under my watch has particular view about borrowing and we have very stringent views for borrowing ”
“In 2022 the State House of Assembly when we had supplementary budget actually approved for us to borrow N100 billion and till this moment we have not borrowed a Kobo out of that ”
“Last year 2023 ,we had an implicit in our budget about N90 billion deficit but we did not even borrow a Kobo out of that and this year we have a deficit of about N121 billion and till this moment we have not borrowed one Kobo of that ”
“The reason is simple, we have been working on projects and programs that will be bankable. We are insisting that we borrow for bankable projects and fir projects that will have the probability and possibility of generating the returns to pay back the debt ‘ he said
Soludo also recalled that recently there was a publication of states receiving N438 billion from the World Bank and Anambra state is not in the list because the state deliberately opted out of that loan .
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