AL committee concludes its analysis of 2022 budget execution, ready to vote

The Second Standing Committee of the Legislative Assembly (AL) has concluded its analysis and discussions over the 2022 government budget execution bill, the committee president, lawmaker Chan Chak Mo, told media yesterday morning after the last committee meetings on this topic.

Chan explained that the last meeting was to review the final details and sign the committee’s opinion, with the bill to be soon referred to the plenary for final voting.

“We should have a final vote on this bill in a plenary session next week,” Chan said, noting that, according to committee members, the government has sufficiently explained the bill to lawmakers.

Among queries is the poor implementation rate of some provisions, which Chan said was because of the pandemic throughout 2022. The pandemic “forced the government to suspend the execution of some of its projects and reallocate resources.”

The president of the committee said that the committee had particularly invited the heads of various departments and services with low rates of execution to explain themselves before the committee. These departments and services explained that, in some cases, payments related to executing and completing their projects had been delayed. In other cases, payments had already been made in early 2023; this fact contributes to an “erroneous interpretation of the 2022 figures.”

Another heated topic of discussion was the return on investments made through government accounts. It was known in advance that these investments had constituted significant losses in 2022.

On this, Chan said that, according to the government’s final calculation, the losses were 3.2% of the amount invested. 2022, therefore, is the second year in which government’s investments have returned losses instead of profits.

The first time this occurred was in 2018. Back then, just as now, the poor performance was justified by worldwide economic crises and market instability.

According to government explanations, such performance should not have been repeated, and in 2023 – though the year is yet to be analyzed in detail – government’s investments should already be returning profits.