Committee passes to reduce budget to MVR15.3 billion

The Parliament Budget Committee has passed to reduce the MVR16.9 billion budget presented to the parliament, to MVR15.3 billion.

The committee earlier decided to reduce the budget to MVR14.5 billion, but revised its decision subsequent to Finance Ministry’s objections to reducing the budget.

Committee member Nolhivaram MP Mohamed Nasheed (Colonel) told Sun Online that following the government’s suggestion, committee members were able to agree to reduce the budget to MVR15.3 billion.

He said that the consensus could be reached due to the hard work of committee chairman Maamigili MP Gasim Ibrahim.

Meanwhile, Abdullah Jihad said two days ago following the first decision to reduce the budget, that several development projects will have to be halted and that the education and health sectors will suffer greatly if the budget is reduced.

However, the Auditor General and MMA advised to reduce the budget to MVR14 billion.

Committee members told Sun Online that it could agree to reduce the budget by one billion Rufiya by cutting down expenses of some construction projects planned by the government.

During the budget debate process, committee members expressed deep concern about the high recurrent expenses and the increasing state deficit due to plans to settle several large expenses by obtaining loans.

Members also noted that the revenues included in the budget are unlikely to be realised. Thus, the budget committee did not have much support for the new sources of income included in the budget.

In this regard, the committee decided to abolish bed tax and increase TGST to 12 percent, while the government had proposed to continue bed tax and increase TGST to 15 percent. Also, the proposition to impose TGST on communication services received no support.

The budget committee’s decisions will only be passed once they are presented at the parliament floor, followed by a vote at the parliament. The budget committee has decided to send the budget report to the parliament speaker on Saturday.