Abdoulai G. Dibba
Members of the National Assembly on Saturday 30th November 2019 at 06:05 am approved the 2020 estimates after chopping off 350 million dalasi.
The National Assembly which is the authority responsible for reviewing and approving the national budget of the country, put on the service delivery and control of wasteful expenses lenses to scrutinise the 2020 estimates presented before them by the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs on Monday, 18th November 2019.
In scrutinising the estimates, the NAMs guided themselves with the excess of government expenditures over revenue which the minister said is expected to increase to 5.5 billion dalasi in 2019 as opposed to 3.6 billion dalasi in 2018.
Being mindful of the danger of widening the deficit which will lead to deficit financing which will automatically increase the debt burden, the National Assembly Members decided for the first time to cut down on expenditure that is not geared to service delivery or income generation and allocated to areas that are geared to service delivery or income generation.
The painstaking process has enabled the National Assembly Members to cut down 350 million Dalasi from the estimated expenditure. They also relocated expenditure in the Ministries of Tourism, Health, Agriculture, the Interior and others to provide for the museum, the hotel school, training doctors, seeds and seeds stores and vehicles for border patrol just to name a few.
After a 22 hours of marathon scrutiny of the estimates, the National Assembly Members finally approved the estimates with a lot of amendments (cut and paste or delete as they put it).
Foroyaa will give a detailed report on the amendments.
