Government to propose supplementary budget

As the budget proposed for this year is expected to run into a deficit by a figure higher than expected, the Government has said that considerations of a supplementary budget were being made.

Addressing the Members of the People’s Majlis, Minister of Finance Abdullah Jihad said that the budget proposed for this year needed to be revised, and that without doing so, “things could not be carried forward”. “It is the Cabinet that would decided the budget to be re-sent to the Majlis. As a member of the Cabinet, I would say that we need to modify the budget”, Jihad had said.

Speaking to Sun Online, Minister of Economic Development Ahmed Mohamed said that an additional sum of 2.4 billion Rufiyaa was needed to go ahead with the current budget. He also had said that approval of the Majlis was necessary to obtain the funds. Ahmed Mohamed said that any modification of the budget could be made through the Majlis, with a supplementary budget.

“There are two options. We may chose to go ahead with the current budget, or we can modify it, and irrespective of which option we follow, there are matters that needed to be addressed on the Majlis floor”, the Economic Minister had said earlier.

The budget that has been passed for this year is set at some 14 billion Rufiyaa. While the income of the Government has been expected to hit 11.48 billion, a deficit of 3 billion was expected.

However, the Ahmed Mohamed, the Economic Minister, said that the deficit would reach 5.5 billion, 2.4 billion more the previously expected deficit. He also said that national debt would be 17 per cent of GDP, and that this could, in a worst-case scenario, rise up to 25 per cent.

“This is the result of some items necessary for the budget being excluded when it was prepared. We would say the whole process of preparing the budget was laxly undertaken”, said the Economic Minister.