Parliament tells govt. to re-submit supplementary budget

The Parliament has instructed the Finance Ministry to resubmit the MVR 6.5 billion supplementary budget it submitted last week, along with the details required under the Public Finance Act.

The MVR 6.5 billion supplementary budget was submitted to the Parliament last Wednesday. It was scheduled in the agenda for Tuesday’s sitting. But the Parliament was unable to hold the sitting due to lack of quorum.

It wasn’t set in the agenda for Wednesday’s sitting – something which the ruling MDP expressed concern over.

Parliament’s communications director Hassan Ziyau told Sun on Tuesday that the supplementary budget was submitted without the details required under the Public Finance Act. He said the Parliament had asked the Finance Ministry to submit the details.

He said that the Finance Ministry still failed to submit all necessary details when it submitted information the second time.

In a letter signed by Speaker Mohamed Nasheed on Tuesday, the Parliament instructed the Finance Ministry to resubmit the supplementary budget with all the necessary details.

“The speaker told the Finance Ministry today to resubmit the budget with the details required under Public Finance Act,” said Ziyau.

The Parliament’s majority leader Mohamed Aslam had expressed concern the budget wasn’t included in the agenda for Wednesday. He accused the Democrats of “doing whatever they want” because they chair the Parliament.

The supplementary budget submitted by the Parliament includes MVR 3.1 billion for recurrent expenditure and MVR 3.3 billion for capital expenditure.

The allotment for recurrent expenditure includes MVR 1.8 billion for subsidies, MVR 1.2 billion for Aasandha – which will increase the budget allocated for Aasandha this year to MVR 2.3 billion.

Meanwhile, the allotment for capital expenditure includes MVR 1.7 billion for PSIP projects.

With the MVR 6.5 billion supplementary budget, the state budget for 2023 will rise to MVR 49.3 billion.