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While assessing additional budget requests in the
budget year, Ministry of Finance and Economic
Development (MoFED) has found out a total of 1.02
billion Br, which is out of the 43.9 billion Br
budget for the current budget year.
Out of this money, MoFED allocated one billion for
capital projects of the Ethiopian Roads Authority
(ERA) and the balance for regular budgets of
Ethiopian Quality and Standards Authority, Ethiopian
Transport Authority, and Ethiopian Radio and
Television Enterprise.
The amount of money that has been approved by MoFED
was presented to parliament last week on April 22,
2008 for discussion and then sent to the Budget
Affairs Standing Committee for further refinement.
ERA is implementing various projects in the
2007/2008 budget year with the 5.6 billion Br budget
it was granted at the beginning of the budget year.
The budget requested by the Authority was 8.9
billion Br though the finance ministry only approved
5.6 Billion Br.
Recently, ERA requested a 2.5 billion Br
supplementary budget, of which only 1.7 billion Br
has been approved. MoFED managed to fulfill the
remaining 700 million Br out of the 1.7 billion Br
with budget repositioning.
But the one billion Br budget could not be given
from the 43.5 billion Br allocated for this budget
year and was found from other sources.
ERA needs to execute the additional budget for
starting the project in Gigir-Imi, a 180Km long road
project at a cost of 152.1 million Br, and the
Imi-Gode project with an outlay of 179.5 million Br.
Aletawondo-Bonsa-Daye project, Addis Ketema –Mehone,
Arbeti-Afdera, Tongo-Begi-Mugi,
Endesellassie-Adiremet, Kebridehar-Shilabo,
Didigsala-Alamata, Kombolcha- Woldya,
Kamashi-YasoGilgelbeles-DibateMekaneselam-Gindewoinare
road construction projects are also part of its
agenda.
MoFED traveled a long way to satisfy these
supplementary budget requests.
“WE have been trying every possible way and we
succeeded at last,” a source at the MoFED told
Fortune.
Sources of the additional budget include closed bank
accounts of state enterprises, unused letters of
credit accounts, surtax imposed on luxury
commodities, privatization revenue and revenue from
state enterprises.
The Ministry locked 229 bank accounts and 160.6
million Br in uncollected income was generated.
Government Offices that opened Letter of Credit (LC)
have kept accounts of huge amount that did not
circulate for years. MoFED earned 84.5 million from
closing these LC accounts.
Ethiopian Custom Authority has collected 492 million
Br between April-January 2007 from sur tax that was
imposed following the 2007 directive.
The other is PPESA, in 2007 and 2008 realized the
number of enterprises for sale were small in number,
the sales were not taken for granted and the money
being earned was not included in the budget. In
practice, however, 263.9 million Br was generated
from the sale.
The for budgets will be heard at the parliament with
the concerned bodies in the coming few weeks.
Chairman of the committee, Wana Wake, told
Fortune that this is his first experience in
approving additional budgets in his three years of
stay in parliament.
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