33% of the 2024 budget will be allocated in the last two months of the year

2024-12-02 08:52:00, Ekonomi CNA

Year after year, the state budget is increasing the concentration of expenses at the end of the year, which shows a lack of skills to manage and implement the budget law.

According to official data from the Ministry of Finance, 33% of the annual budget is expected to be allocated in the last two months of the year.

From January to October, a total of 517 billion ALL were spent, while the annual plan is 771 billion ALL, according to official data. In the last two months of the year, 254 billion lek remain to be spent (2.5 billion euros, or 33% of the total budget).

The state budget has experienced a good fiscal period from the increase in receipts as a result of the positive performance of the economy. Economic growth and employment expansion have helped boost incomes at double-digit rates in the past two years.

However, a sharp problem is emerging in terms of public spending. Public entities fail to realize the spending program according to the objectives that have been approved by law in the Parliament of Albania. Non-realizations are leading to changes in the budget several times a year with normative acts, reallocating funds from items that are not realized to others that move faster.

A detailed table with the progress of annual investments in 2024 shows that the weakest allocation in capital investments is in education, where at the end of the year not even a third of the funds have been spent at the pre-university level. Since this part of the investments is the responsibility of the local government, they fail to be realized according to the program, leaving the schools in miserable conditions.

Also, investments in the local government have performed very poorly. Last year only half of the program was implemented and this year progress is very poor.

The inability to spend on time is creating liquidity surpluses in government accounts. The High State Control in an inspection at the Ministry of Finance verified deficiencies and incompetence of the staff in liquidity management.

The concentration of expenses at the end of the year indicates a lack of effectiveness in the use of taxes. KLSH has verified that almost 20 percent of the 2023 budget has been allocated in the first two months of 2024.

In addition to deficiencies in the design of projects and their implementation according to planning, procurement officers are reluctant to sign for fear of involving SPAK investigations.

According to the Ministry of Finance, general public expenditures, for the 10-month period of 2024, reached about 517 billion ALL, with a realization of 91.7 percent of the plan for the period, while compared to the same period of 2023, this item resulted 7.1 percent higher or about ALL 33 billion more.

In annual terms, the general expenses for the 10th month of 2024 were realized to the extent of 70.1 percent of the annual plan according to the initial budget and 67.0 percent of the annual plan according to Normative Act no. 3 date 28.08.2024./ Monitor magazine