Reps Okay N140bn S’East Development Commission’s 2026 Budget Proposal

The House of Representatives Committee on South East Development Commission (SEDC), has approved the N140 billion propose budget of the Commission for the 2026 financial year.

This followed the budget defence session of the committee with the managing director of the Commission, Mark Okoye, at the National Assembly Complex, Abuja on Thursday.

Okoye told the lawmakers that out of the total sum, N106 billion, representing 76.25 per cent is for
capital expenditure and N25 billion, representing 18.5 per cent goes to
recurrent expenditure while personnel cost is pegged at N7.3 billion accounting for 5.21 per cent.

“We’ve also seen the 2026 call circular as published by the Federal Ministry of Budget and Planning, which said to all of us, take your entire capital expenditure of last year and bring it to this year because of one or two issues. Of course, we are very well aware of what’s going on.

“There were a lot of debts, and what have you, that the government inherited. So last year was about assuring investor confidence, addressing, servicing the debt, such that now, this year, we believe and we are confident that we’ve made those provisions, we’ve moved our budget from last year and we’ve brought it into the current year. So that has influenced what we have in front of us,”he stated.

Okoye said the SEDC has a comprehensive ambitious development plans for the South East which included construction of railways across the five states of the zone to enhance trade and investment to make the region a unified economic block through shared visions of all stakeholders.

According to him, there are plans to
expand the South-East economy from about $40 billion to $200 billion within the next ten years, as part of its long-term regional development strategy.

“We have a vision to make the South East a preferred investment hub in the next ten years. And we will achieve this through industrialization, agriculture and technology,”he said.

The SEDC boss further noted that, there will be a harmonisation of economic and development policies across the region which would be funded by both the government and private sector as well as external investors and development partners.

“So to summarise, the Southeast Regional Intervention Projects and Programme, we have a provision of N10.5 billion.