By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor
The Government of Liberia’s proposed 2017/18 fiscal budget now goes to the Senate for concurrence after the House of Representatives passed the draft budget Tuesday, July 18th. The budget is in the tune of US$526,548,000. The Plenary of the House voted in its session to pass the budget.
The National draft budget was submitted to the Liberian Legislature by the Executive Branch of Government for scrutiny and subsequent passage. Following the passage in plenary Bong County Representative Prince Moye, who is the chairman on Ways, Means, Finance, and Budget highlighted that the budget is now off the shoulders of the lower house.
According to Rep. Moye, following vigorous and thorough scrutiny of the budget, along with the authorities of the Finance and Development Planning, line ministries and agencies, the Liberia revenue and members of the public, the committee submitted to plenary for passage.
He said that during the cross examining of the budget, his committee was able to discover US$37,015,432.00 as additional and unencumbered revenue.
He told the media that of the total amount, US$11,968,188 is considered as contingent revenue comprising tax, non-tax, and the World Bank Millennium Challenge Corporation Road Fund, and US$25,047,244.00 is considered as a core revenue comprising also tax, and the World bank Millennium Corporation Road Fund.
“After all of these adjustment in both core and contingent revenue, we realized a net effect in terms of additional and unencumbered revenue of over US#37 million, thus, bringing the total adjusted revenue for fiscal year 2017/18 to US$563,563,423.00, which is Liberian dollars is LRD 61,428,414,088.00 or sixty one Billion, four hundred twenty eight million, four hundred fourteen thousands, eighty eight Liberian dollars.
He narrated that the US$37 was submitted to the executive branch and taking into consideration critical needs in the justice and security, health, education, infrastructure, judiciary, and the pending 2017 Representatives and Presidential election there were some apportionment those direction.
May 21, in keeping with the constitution of Liberia the Executive Branch of government submitted to the Liberian Legislature the fiscal year draft budget 2017/2018 in the tune of US$ 526.6 million which account for 12.3 % reduction from the US$ 600.2 million approved for FY 2016/2017 reflecting 3.5% decrease on the end of year forecast of US$ 545.5 million.
The budget that the total revenue envelope comprised of US$ 483.7 million in revenue raised from domestic sources (Taxes and non-tax revenue).
In the budget presented to the legislature, tax revenue of US$393.6 Million is decreased by 8.8 percent from the approved amount for FY2016/17 budget with non-tax revenue of US$90.2 Million with US$ 37.9 million in grants from external sources and US$4.8 million in contingent revenue from domestic resources.
The budget also shows that Non-Tax revenue of US$90.2 is projected to decrease by 8.2 percent compared to the US$98.3 million that was approved in the FY-2016/2017 budget.
This according to the ministry of finance and Development Planning is an improvement to the current year-end estimated and is driven by anticipated increase in petroleum storage fees, forestry, mineral mining, cellular mobile networks, as well as expected improvements in state owned entities (SOEs) like Liberia Petroleum Refining company, National Port Authority and others.
