Government puts the brakes on proposal of supplementary budget

Minister of Finance and treasury Abdulla Jihad has said that they have slowed down all efforts to propose the supplementary budget to parliament.

The budget is being assembled as a means to compensate for the reduction of the initial budget proposed by the government for 2013.

Finance Minister Jihad told Sun that they’ve slowed down all work regarding the supplementary budget in order to have discussion with the political parties. The discussions have not been scheduled yet, he said

“We want to the supplementary budget to pass. This can only be done by discussions with pro-government parties. We’ll propose the budget after doing this,” Minister Jihad said.

He said that they had initially planned to propose budget at the start of the parliament’s second term this year, which began this month. Jihad said that a MVR 1.8 billion supplementary budget was also presented to the cabinet.

A ministerial committee consisting of the Finance Minister, the Tourism Minister, Economic Minister, Education Minister and the Health Minister has been assembled to review the supplementary budget.