Posted in Budget Transparency on Sep 20, 2018

The parliament has just approved the budget on 13 September, cutting down only 0.92% of the total amount proposed by the ministries. A total of 20 different budget assessment teams of the parliament worked to chunk down the government budget proposals since the start of the ninth regular session of the parliament that started on 23 July 2018. Who suffered the most budget cuts?

While Attorney-General Office, Auditor-General Office, Constitutional Tribunal and President Office came out of the budget session of the parliament without any cut from their proposed budget, Nay Pyi Taw Development Committee, Industry Ministry and Foreign Ministry didn’t share the same fate. The Foreign Ministry had 12.65% of their budget proposals cut by the parliament with 43.47% of its capital expenditures rejected.

Nay Pyi Taw Development Committee capital spendings were cut down by 42.25% and that account of SEEs under the Industry Ministry was slashed by 33.36%. Another organization that suffered significantly from capital budget cuts is the Supreme Court whose capital expenditures were reduced by 27.14%. Which costs are cut?

Understandably only 0.14% of different government agencies’ current expenditures which cover salaries and other direct expenses was cut while 2.92% of capital expenditures covering construction, machinery and equipment and other project costs were not approved. But the parliament didn’t approve 11.81% of the Industry Ministry’s budgeted current expenditures for their State-owned Enterprise projects. How much?

So far, we have only talked about the percentage of who gets most budget cuts and have not cover the amount of money it involved. In total, the parliament saved 230 billion MMK through budget deliberations. In terms of amount cut, the Industry Ministry and the Construction Ministry have combined cut amount of 0.1 billion MMK which makes 50% of the entire budget cut by the Hluttaw. They are joined by the Transport and Communications Ministry, the Health and Sports Ministry and the Planning and Finance Ministry in Top Five list of ministries with highest amount of budget cut. Who cuts the budget most?

Now we are entering into an interesting question: who in the parliament is most fierceful in cutting the government budgets? Parliament is divided into 20 different teams in budget sessions to review the budget proposals of different government agencies. Team No. 12 which reviewed the Industry Ministry proved to be the most ruthless in cutting the budget both in terms of both percentage of cut amount and overall amount by cutting 13.88% of the ministry’s entire budget which amounts for 59654.145 million MMK.