The general budget has achieved a significant increase in the fiscal deficit in the first 4 months of the current fiscal year 2020/2021, with the deficit recorded until the end of last July amounted to about KD4.2 billion dinars, without deducting the 10 percent for the benefit of Future Generations Fund (FGF), which finally stopped until a surplus is achieved, Al Rai said.
Al-Rai said, quoting informed sources, explained that “these figures mean that the budget has achieved an average deficit since the beginning of the year, amounting to one billion dinars per month, while the general budget is heading to achieve the seventh consecutive deficit since the oil recession in 2014.” indicating that “this deficit reflects an accounting increase. It is significant in value compared to the same period in the fiscal year 2019-2020, during which the budget achieved a surplus of KD44.7 million, after deducting KD630 million for the reserves of future generations.
The total budget deficit last year amounted to KD5.6 billion dinars, and therefore the deficit achieved during the first third of this year, which reached 4.2 billion dinars, constitutes about 3-quarters of the deficit recorded for 2019-2020 in its entirety, said the daily, quoting sources. While the sources did not reveal the size of the revenues of the four months recorded of the fiscal year, they reported that oil revenues witnessed an improvement compared to the rates recorded in the last quarter of the last fiscal year, and that the average price of oil recorded in the budget for the month of July reached 43 dollars.
As for public expenditures during the four months, the daily said, quoting sources, that there was a recorded rise, driven by government spending in the face of the repercussions of the coronavirus.
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