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The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED)
was occupied last week with a budget hearing of
state Agencies for the 2008/2009 budget year. The
Agencies have presented their requests to the office
of the Ministry up to March 26, 2008.
Two weeks ago, all organizations presented their
budget request with a proposal for their regular and
capital projects to be carried out next year.
Chaired by Sufian Ahmed, Minister of MoFED, the
budget hearing is conducted with the participation
of the ministry’s budget experts, and the budget
seeking agencies with their time schedule.
The amount of money to be allocated for each Agency
was decided after each meeting, except ERA’s budget
which was to be reviewed in another meeting, sources
told Fortune. The authority requested 12
billion Br loans for the budget years of 2008/2009
from the federal government.
As the money was found to be too huge an amount for
MoFED to afford to give, the re quest would be
discussed in another meeting.
In the 2007/08 budget year, the budget allocated for
ERA was 5.6 billion Br though it had requested 8.8
billion Br.
The next government institution to request a large
amount of money, next to ERA, was the Ministry of
Education (MoE). The Ministry is currently busy with
62 projects, of which 23 focus on higher education
and 24 on technical and vocational training
programs. The remaining amount is earmarked for
other education related programs.
Of the overall projects, 82.8 pc focus on the
expansion of higher education in the country. MoE is
expected to seriously implement projects already
started this year after tabling a two billion Br
request last year.
Something which baffled officials at MOFED was the
300 million Br request from the Government Housing
Agency.
“The Government Housing Agency has been turned by
proclamation, just into Housing Administration yet,
it has requested a budget for housing construction,”
sources told Fortune.
GHA administers 16 thousand houses in Addis Abeba
and Dire-dawa. It was initially called Rented Houses
Agency (RHA) and was interested in the real estate
business. The Ministry of Councils, in January 2008,
decided that as the Ethiopian Housing Development
Corporation was involved in housing, GHA would place
emphasis on administrative issues.
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