Governor Charles Soludo has reiterated his administration’s commitment to improving the businesses of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with grants across 326 wads in Anambra State.
This was revealed while presenting the 2025 Budget of N606,991,849,118 to the Anambra State House of Assembly, in Awka, the State Capital, on Tuesday, 19th November 2024, christened “Changing Gears 2.0” with emphasis on acceleration and execution.
With the 2025 budget, Governor Soludo plans to expand the state’s ‘One-Youth-Two-Skills’ programme to accommodate more youths and empower them accordingly, and also establish a ‘One Million Digital Tribe,’ scaling the digital skill training programme through the Solution Innovation District (SID).
The initial 5,000 graduates of the state’s ‘One Youth, Two Skills’ training programme for empowerment purposes, are now entrepreneurs and the Soludo administration has launched the second phase for 8,700 young people across various skills, setting aside N2.5 billion to support their start-up capital. Also, the Solution Innovation District (SID) propelled by the present government has trained 20,000 youths in four major tech skills and recently graduated 1,500 youths in its ‘Code Anambra Programme’.
In the budget, recurrent expenditures account for N139.5 billion (YoY growth of 45.0%), while capital expenditure is N467.5 billion (YoY growth of 48.9%). The Capital Budget constitutes 77% of the total budget size, while recurrent expenditures account for 23% (the same ratios as for the 2024 budget). The budget deficit is estimated at N148.3 billion (24% of the budget compared to 30% in the 2024 budget).
In a release signed by the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Christian Aburime, several key sectors are seeing significant increases. The administrative sector saw an increase of 45.5%; the Economic sector 40.1%; the Judiciary sector 51.3%; the social sector 82.7%; Education 101.4%; Health increased by 57.1%; and Infrastructure investment by 38.9%. This was with a 48 percent increase from the 2024 budget of N410,132,225,272.
It was revealed that the needs of poor and vulnerable individuals are also addressed in the budget, as more than 100,000 households will receive ten or more seedlings of agricultural produce, as it did in 2024, for food sufficiency and improved livelihood.
This year, in addition to distributing over one million palm and coconut seedlings to 130,000 households in the second phase of the state’s “Farm-to-Feed” project, the scheme has been expanded to include some staple crops that are at risk of extinction. These include the distribution of 200,000 Ukwa seedlings, 50,000 Akilu seedlings, 50,000 Oji Igbo seedlings, and 40,000 pawpaw seedlings, with plans to distribute 10 million of these economically beneficial trees to communities and households over the next six years.
Soludo’s administration is speedily redefining governance, blending vision and execution to unlock Anambra State’s vast economic and human potential and repositioning it as a land of infinite opportunities for discerning investors, as highlighted in the recent 2024 Anambra State Investment Summit in Awka, themed “Changing Gears, Accelerating Anambra’s Economic Transformation.”