Budget submission on Wednesday’s agenda

Submission of state budget for 2018 is on agenda for Wednesday’s sitting of the Parliament.

The budget was put on agenda at a time when rumors had surface the budget was submitted without any details or breakdowns. Reportedly the budget was sent to Parliament well after the legally mandated date of October 31st.

Finance Minister Ahmed Munawwar will submit 2018 budget to the Parliament. The sitting will begin at 11am.

While the last session of the Parliament for this year is already underway, only six sittings were held so far.

Next year’s budget is expected to exceed this year’s budget significantly.

Parliamentarians have told local news outlets that they believe the budget for 2018 will be larger than the record MVR 26.7 billion passed for this year.

However, the government had this month proposed a supplementary budget of 493 million which parliamentarians voted to provide it with last Thursday.

This supplementary budget was passed, with only votes from parliamentarians aligned with the ruling party as the opposition had boycotted the vote and protested on the floor, while the government had said it would generate MVR 21.9 billion as profit, MVR 9 million of which is yet to accounted for.