Well-informed government sources said there is no government tendency at the present time to increase the cost of living allowance in light of the resignation of the government and the dissolution of the National Assembly, especially that the state’s general budget is laden with many burdens, especially the fifth chapter devoted to salaries, and that the caretaker government is working hard to take effective measures to address the imbalances in the general budget and implement a package of programs aimed at reducing expenditures by rationalizing spending and stopping spending outside the budget items.

Sources told a local Arabic daily that talking about raising the cost of living allowance, which is currently estimated at 120 dinars, 220 or 250 dinars, is unrealistic, especially since the total annual cost is estimated at 520 million dinars, stressing that any increase in this regard will cost the general budget a similar amount and that will be burdensome, especially since the current increase in oil prices is dependent on the geopolitical events that the world is currently going through with the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.

Sources said that the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee had previously approved the proposal to reconsider the allowance for the cost of living allowance, and increase it by 100 percent, to become 240 dinars instead of 120. However, the government did not take any action with it in this regard.

Sources explained that raising the cost of living is not currently a priority for the government, as it is working within the framework of 3 main tracks currently, which are reducing budget waste for unnecessary items, repricing services and goods provided to the investment and commercial sector, in addition to repricing state-owned lands, and collecting State dues to others

It is worth noting that the general budget has suffered for many years from the crisis of almost total dependence on oil revenues as a major source of budget revenues to the extent that in one year it reached 94 percent.


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