2024 Budget: Keita Calls for fiscal discipline through economic management

 

By Sheriff Saidykhan

The Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs Hon. Seedy Keita  has called for fiscal discipline through economic management across various ministries in the country. 

He made these remarks on Thursday in an interview with Peter Gomez on Coffee Time show.

“You do not have to entertain an expenditure push simply for the sheer objective of saying yes, I am given in what the agencies required. 

But you have to make sure you do it in a financial sustainable way. So, this calls for fiscal discipline. And that fiscal discipline is the anchor of budget execution. 

Even in the course of implementing the budget, you look at every month how much you can within the approve budget- and how much budget has come by that you can actually spend without bloating the expenditure,” he said.

A week after presenting his estimates of revenue for 2024 at the National Assembly, Minster Keita added that the objective of any fiscal budget is to ensure that you do not spend beyond your means.

Asked on the little budget allocation for the Ministry of Youth and Sport, Minister Keita explained.

“So a ministry like Youth and Sport is very important, because the bulk of the population of the country are youths. 

But that does not mean that what is allocated in the budget is their source of revenue. Youth and Sport continue to benefit from levies, from the imports-  they continue to benefit from the levies of the gateway.

And when we are formulating the budget, that whatever we allocate, there are additional sources of funding that comes to the sector. And when you're allocating to the sector you look at the total available resource pools. Those resource pools could be from donors, partners, agencies or could be from levies.

That forms the basis of how much is allocated to the sector. Particularly for the Youth and Sport Ministry, we have increase their allocation from the 2023 budget by 21 per cent . In addition to that, the Ministry also have levies which commulatively for the 2023 was projected at 91 million. 

On the other hand, budget is a planning process. We know youth issues are very important.  that is why we are allocating adequate resourse to them within and outside the budget throug levies,” he concluded.