GITEGA, May 27th (ABP) – Burundi’s senators, meeting in plenary session on Thursday 23 May 2024, unanimously adopted the draft law on budget regulations and reports for the 2022/2023 financial year, in their hemicycle in Gitega (centre of the country), in Burundi’s political capital.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Audace Niyonzima, who represented the government in presenting the bill to the senators and explaining certain aspects of it.
In his explanatory statement, Minister Niyonzima said that the bill in question is a legal act that sets out, at the end of the 2022/2023 budget year, the final amounts of revenue received and expenditure disbursed by the State, as well as the resulting financial balance. He added that that bill gives parliamentarians the opportunity to carry out a posteriori control of the execution of the budget and the management of appropriations granted to public managers. Its analysis also gives parliamentarians the opportunity to assess the differences between forecasts and actual figures, and to deduce the measures required for the following financial year.
In addition, Minister Niyonzima explained that Parliament has the opportunity to note and approve the budgetary results for the year in question.
During the discussions, Minister Niyonzima responded to the senators’ questions. Those included the impact of the activities of the Youth Investment and Development Bank (BIJE) and the impact of the activities of the Youth Investment Bank (BIJE).
As far as BIJE is concerned, he explained, its impact can be summed up as job creation and its contribution to financial inclusion. Through the granting of finance to women, he explained, at least 21,404 women beneficiaries of loans have been able to get jobs to work on their own projects.
Speaking of financial inclusion, Mr. Niyonzima said that between 3 March 2022 and 31 March 2024, the total number of accounts opened by BIDF was 3,648, including 3,481 belonging to women. Of those, he added, 2,152 accounts belong to women’s groups (cooperatives, companies) and 1,329 accounts belong to individual women. The total number of beneficiaries of those accounts is 45,365 women, including 44,036 women grouped in cooperatives and companies, and 1,329 women who have opened individual accounts (employees, farmers, shopkeepers, etc).
As for the BIJE, Minister Niyonzima indicated that 911 cooperatives made up of 16,944 young people, including 10,672 young boys and 6,272 young girls, have already benefited from funding totalling seven billion three hundred and twenty-four million four hundred and fifty thousand Burundian francs (7,324,450,000 BIF). Those sums have been released and channelled into various sectors of economic growth, creating 10,166 jobs in different sectors for young people.
In conclusion, Minister Niyonzima indicated that the financing of youth projects by BIJE has had a significant impact on the socio-economic life of Burundian youth in particular, and on the country’s economic life in general.