The National Assembly yesterday adopted the budget appropriation Bill for fiscal year 2024-25 with 44 members in favour and one against, with 46 members present.
The house also adopted the supplementary budget appropriation Bill for fiscal year 2023-24 with all 46 members in favour of the Bill.
For the fiscal year 2024-25, the government has allocated a total budget of Nu 97.65 billion. This allocation includes Nu 50.81 billion for recurrent expenditures and Nu 38.34 billion for capital expenditures. An extra Nu 3.22 billion has been allocated through a supplementary budget.
The House adopted all the 16 recommendations submitted by the Economic and Finance Committee (EFC).
One of the recommendations was to allocate an additional Nu 140.4 million to the Bhutan Food and Drug Authority. The House approved this recommendation and adopted to allocate the funds from the supplementary budget.
For the fiscal year 2024-25, the BFDA is provided with a capital budget of Nu 73.86 million.
EFC’s chairperson, MP Rinchen Wangdi, said that the allocation was to enhance the capacity of the National Food Testing laboratory and improve the certification services to facilitate export and import of food and food products.
He added that the allocation was to be provided in the first fiscal year so the following fiscal years would run smoothly.
The House also adopted to drop the budget allocation of Nu 25.99 million for Green Bhutan Corporation Limited from the national budget in keeping with the requirements of forming state enterprises stipulated under chapter 5 of the Public Finance Act 2007.
The adoption also included the government to offload the allocation of Nu 77.05 million under CARLEP loan financing for Koufuku International from the national budget and transfer the debt liability to Druk Holding and Investments with proper accounting treatment as on-lending from the government.
The House also agreed to give authority to the department of energy for implementation, ownership and maintenance of installation of solar panels in schools. However, this budget is retained with the Ministry of Education and Skills Development as proposed in the budget.
According to the budget report, the installation of solar panels in 20 different schools is planned under project-tied assistance, with an additional allocation of Nu 19.88 billion budgeted for the Ministry of Education and Skills Development.
Finance Minister Lekey Dorji stated that the proposal for additional budget allocation of Nu 140.4 million for the Bhutan Food and Drug Authority from the supplementary budget, along with the allocation of one percent of GDP (amounting to Nu 7.1 billion) in the 13th Plan for human resource development and research and development, will be submitted to the Cabinet for approval.
He added that the government would be able to provide a budget for human resource development and research and development only in the following fiscal years.
The House also discussed the EFC’s recommendation on the establishment of proper mechanisms by the government to ensure optimal utilisation of the capital budget. However, the members did not support the committee’s recommendation on reduction of the capital budget based on the implementation capacity of the budgetary bodies.
It was found that about 20 percent of the capital budget remained underutilised every year because of lack of human resource.
Other recommendations adopted were on the government to carry out feasibility studies and business viability of crops under commercial farming like chirup, commercial and peri-urban farming under the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and identifying dzongkhags based on its importance for allocation of Nu 45 million for the construction of chain-link fencing projects.
The government has to come up with the guidelines for project-tied grants, to institute appropriate measures to mitigate inflation risk in the country, manage excess liquidity, and up shore international reserves, among others.
The Bills will be forwarded to the National Council for deliberation.
