GITEGA, December 28th (ABP) – Under the auspices of the President of the Senate, Mr. Emmanuel Sinzohagera, the senators gathered in plenary session, on Wednesday, December 27, 2023, at the hemicycle of Gitega (center of the country) to analyze and unanimously adopt the bill revising the General State Budget for the 2023/2024 financial year, a check on the site by ABP has revealed.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Mr. Audace Niyonzima, was the guest of the day to present the bill to senators.
He reported that in the revised bill, the overall budget deficit amounts to BIF 426.3 billion compared to BIF 685.1 billion in the initial budget. He also pointed out that the net financing of that deficit which makes it possible to balance the draft general budget of the State is BIF 426.3 billion.
According to Minister Niyonzima, the total resources of the general State budget including donations increase from BIF 3,238.07 billion to BIF 3,371.6 billion, an increase of 4.1% compared to the initial budget law. This is when the total expenditure of the State, that is to say, the expenses of the general budget of the State, increases from BIF 3923.19 billion to BIF 3780.8 billion for the draft budget of the State. State for the revised financial year 2023/2024, a decrease of 3.6% compared to the initial budget law.
Minister Niyonzima indicated that in that revised budget, tax revenues are increasing compared to the forecasts of the initial finance law of 2023/2024. According to him, those revenues amount to BIF 1,734.4 billion. He further reported that for the non-tax revenues of the revised budget, they increased from BIF 345.2 billion to BIF 356.4 billion, an increase of 3.2% compared to the non-tax revenues initially planned.
In that revised budget bill, the amount allocated to the budget line “support for development projects of village cooperatives” has been reduced. This amount increased from BIF 87,659,000,000 in the initial finance law of 2023/2024 to BIF 65,515,885,120 in the amending finance bill, a decrease of BIF 22,141,114,880. The minister in charge of public finances reported that FONIC has more than BIF 16 billion in its account which it must first exhaust during the rest of the 2023/2024 budget year to cope with ongoing domestic debt of the State, he said.
During that plenary session, the president of the senate, Mr. Emmanuel Sinzohagera asked the minister in charge of public finances why the annual wages and advancement of grade have not yet been released until now for sectors with special bylaws. According to him, Burundians have the habit of dragging out issues in which they find no interest.
The minister indicated that there is a commission which is working on that subject, but that they are awaiting the decree which specifies how those annual wages are calculated. The minister informed senators that this work will not exceed six months.
The senators also wanted to know why in each general State budget, there are always costs allocated to the repair of the State plane, even though they do not see it. Here, Minister Niyonzima reported that the government of Burundi has purchased a plane but that it is being repaired and that recently there is a commission that has visited it to see if it will be able to fly or be sold. “These costs are still planned because this plane was purchased by the government of Burundi even if it is not yet in service,” Minister Niyonzima concluded.
Note that after an in-depth analysis of that bill, the senators passed it unanimously.