The government plans to increase the 2017
national budget by 15.7 percent, to more than $5 billion – representing an
increase over this year’s government expenditure of more than $4.3 billion – a
government source said yesterday.
According to the Khmer Times source, the 2017
budget will focus on three main sectors – education, health and social welfare
and economic development.
While the spokesman for the Council of
Ministers, Phay Siphan, was reluctant to reveal the rise in government
expenditure for the 2017 national budget, he confirmed an increase in next
year’s spending for those three areas.
However, he said the figures would be
released after this week’s cabinet meeting.
“The 2017 budget plan will be discussed
during the upcoming cabinet meeting [which will be chaired by Prime Minister
Hun Sen] on Friday,” he said.
“The increase in government expenditure in
next year’s budget is possible due to the rise in revenue from our tax and
customs and excise duties collection,” he told Khmer Times.
“Our three priority sectors in 2017 are
education, health and social welfare and economic development,” added Mr.
Siphan.
He pointed out that funds for government
expenditure in the 2017 national budget would come from local revenue arising
from direct and indirect taxes, grants from development partners as well as
loans from multilateral financial institutions.
The government collected about $1.2 billion
in taxes during the first nine months of the year, 20 percent more than the
same period last year. In the same time period, the General Department of
Customs and Excise collected $1.3 billion, up 16 percent compared with the
previous nine months.
For the 2016 national budget, the government
approved a 16 percent increase to make it $4.36 billion, from $3.75 billion in
2015. There was a 15.68 percent rise in social spending to $1.21 billion, from
slightly more than $1 billion in 2015.
The biggest expenditure was on economic
development, which saw a funding increase by 20 percent to about $1.3 billion,
from about $1.07 billion in 2015.
Meanwhile, government expenditure in 2016 on
defense, security and maintaining public order rose by 16.51 percent to about
$711 million, from about $610 million in 2015.
Preap Kol, executive director of Transparency
International (Cambodia), agreed that the government prioritizes spending on
education, health and social welfare and economic development in next year’s
national budget.
“These three sectors are a must for the
country and they benefit all Cambodians,” he said.
However, he also raised concerns about
monitoring the use of funds allocated to the various ministries in the national
budget.
“The national budget keeps increasing every
year, while there is very little monitoring on how well the funds have been
utilized in the various sectors,” said Mr. Kol.
“Some sectors, like health, for instance,
have not made much progress. There are questions to be asked on where the funds
have gone and the answers need to be forthcoming for the sake of transparency,”
he added.
“Of course we do appreciate the increase in
government spending in the priority sectors. But what’s most important, also,
is a mechanism for monitoring the use of funds in a transparent manner – with
the participation of all institutions, the public sector, and civil society.”
Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency
(CRRT), a watchdog organization, said recently that information about
Cambodia’s budget was difficult to access.
“In many countries, a citizen’s budget is
published by governments to give a non-technical overview of what the budget
contains. This process does not exist in Cambodia,” said the group in the
website.
“The only other way that the public can check
up on the Royal Government’s budgetary spending is to look at the National
Audit Report. However, the reports currently take years to be published,
meaning that the funding has long ago been spent. The most recent National
Audit Report published was for the 2011 budget. Consequently, scrutiny is
difficult,” said CRRT.
“At CRRT, we think there is a clear need for
greater budget transparency in Cambodia.”
May Kunmakara
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