By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The budget hearing for 2021 has started on Thursday at the Treasury Building, ministry of Finance. The opening day of the budget planning process saw key ministries present policy strategies as officials of the Finance Ministry defined the government’s priorities for 2021.
Minister of Finance, Jacob Jusu Saffa, said the theme of the 2021 budget remains the same as in 2020, which is ‘Fiscal Consolidation for Human Capital Development and Job Creation.’
Saffa said much of the programmes of the government have been interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, he noted, the priorities and implementation will remain the same.
The minister however noted that the government is committed to making 2021 “a year of accelerated delivery.”
“Amidst the challenges, government’s priorities for 2021 will continue to be the implementations of the Free Quality Education, strengthening the Health Sector, supporting agriculture and food production and the completion of key projects, provision of electricity and safe drinking water to key districts and scale up social safety net programmes,” Saffa said.
Saffa urged MDAs to cut down on recurrent expenditure.
“We are going to drastically slash recurrent expenditure and priority will be given to capital expenditure. 15% of our budget goes to recurrent expenditure, we cannot develop as a nation if our recurrent expenditure is that high,” Saffa said.
The Finance Minister said despite the pandemic, the New Year promises to be better with recovery expected on the GDP, Domestic revenue and inflation rate. Domestic revenue is expected to recover to 13.2 percent of GDP, by 2021, while the economy is expected to grow by average of 4.5 percent.
Chief Minister Professor David Francis presided over the opening ceremony. He urged all Ministries, Departments and Agencies to ensure their budget align with the priorities of governments.
“The policy you prescribe should be comprehensive, realistic and be in line with the government priorities. They must also embrace our manifesto priorities,” Prof. Francis said.
“Every MDA should be ready to drive performance to acceptable standard,” he added.
Following the conclusion of the opening session, the ministries of Agriculture, Education, Energy were the first, among others, to take to the floor to explain their policy agenda for the year.
In the coming days, MDAs will explain their budgetary priorities and answer questions from officials of the Ministries of Finance and Planning and Economic Development.
The budget hearing is expected to be completed on the 16th of October.
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