Ethiopia Releases 204.9 Bln Birr From Reserve Budget to Cover Funding Gaps

Mintesinot Niggusie

Ethiopia released 204.9 billion birr from its contingency budget during the first nine months of the current fiscal year to support federal institutions facing funding shortages and to finance programmes that were not included in the original budget plan.

The amount represents about 76 percent of the 269 billion birr reserve budget approved for the fiscal year, according to the Ministry of Finance’s nine month performance report submitted to the House of Peoples’ Representatives Standing Committee on Plan, Budget and Finance Affairs, as cited by Ethiopian Insider.

The report stated that executive agencies encountered budget shortages while implementing programmes planned for the fiscal year, despite the government disbursing most of the funds initially scheduled for the period.

Parliament approved a 1.9 trillion birr federal budget for the 2018 fiscal year, including 1.3 trillion birr allocated to federal institutions. Close to one trillion birr had been planned for disbursement during the first nine months of the fiscal year, according to the report.

The federal government executed about 81.1 percent of the planned disbursement during the period. The Ministry of Finance said it paid out 847.9 billion birr to federal institutions over the nine month period.

The report also showed that several institutions requested supplementary funding to carry out projects and activities that were not incorporated during the preparation of the annual budget. According to the ministry, the additional requests mainly related to programmes that could not be financed through internal budget reallocations.

The Ministry of Finance said it evaluated the necessity of the requests before approving the additional allocations from the reserve budget.

The report added that the ministry continued implementing programme based budgeting measures aimed at improving public resource allocation and strengthening expenditure efficiency and cost management across government institutions.