59 percent of 2016 budget is recurrent expenditure

Minister of Finance and Treasury Abdulla Jihad has announced that MVR 16.2 billion or 59 percent of the Proposed State Budget for 2016 is recurrent expenditure.

Jihad said this while presenting the budget to the parliament this morning.

Details of recurrent expenditure:

- 31 percent is salaries, allowances and pension of civil servants

- 9 percent is subsidies and grants

- 10 percent is day-to-day operation of offices.

Jihad said that 41 percent has been allocated as capital expenditure, out of which 80 percent would be spent on Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) projects.

Projected revenue and grants stands at MVR 22.8 billion, which consists of MVR 16.8 billion from tax income, MVR 3.7 billion from grants, and MVR 1.5 billion from proposed projects.

The deficit is MVR 3.4 billion, which is 6 percent of GDP.

“The deficit will be made up for by MVR 2.5 billion received from international organisations and MVR 870 million from local groups as grants,” Jihad said.