By Omar Bah
Finance Minister Seedy Keita on Monday informed the National Assembly that the ministries of health, foreign affairs, interior and basic education have jointly expended D954 million on personal emoluments and interest payments.
Addressing lawmakers on the implementation and monitoring of the annual budget, Minister Keita disclosed that while they were able to contain discretional expenditures, statutory expenditures such as personal emoluments and interest payment exceeded their annual budget due to unexpected increase both in wage bills and interest payments by 12% and 4% respectively.
He further stated that the total GLF expenditure stands at D20.4 billion compared to the annual budget of D20.3 billion, meaning the overall expenditure is beyond the budget for the year just.
“The overrun expenditure in personal emoluments can be attributed mainly to the following: Ministry of Basic Education – D470 million, Ministry of Foreign Affairs-D320 million, Ministry of Interior-D83 million and Ministry of Health-D81 million,” he said.
He said given the over performance of domestic resource mobilisation and budget support disbursements in December, the budget balance recorded a surplus of D1.5 billion.
The minister said the consolidated GLF revenue performance for the 2023 fiscal year indicates a positive outturn, reaching D21.9 billion compared to a budget of D19.7 billion, representing an over performance of 11%.
“The main drivers of this strong performance include an improvement in indirect tax collections due to an increase in VAT receipts on non-oil imports, nontax revenue and substantial realisation of program grants (budget support) received late December 2023.
“The reported domestic revenue performance for the 2023 fiscal year indicates a very impressive outturn, reaching D17.81 billion compared to a budget of D16.89 billion, representing an over performance of 5%,” he added.
He said the impressive performance is the results of better-than-expected outturn for international trade taxes, which registered a 29% growth, adding that the total revenue including program grants reached D21.9 billion compared to the D19.7 billion budgeted.
“By specific tax heads, import duty grew by 15%, whilst import VAT recorded a growth of 47%,” he said.
Minister Keita said non-tax revenue performed 48% more than expected as results of an improved revenue collection of customs and excise duties by GRA, adding that the capital revenue also performed more than expected by D701 million, which is attributed to the sale of Mega Bank.
“Revenue from VAT on oil and non-oil imports has exceeded the budget by 220% and 122%, respectively. Total VAT on imports amounted to D3.4 billion, which is D1.1 billion more than its budget. This growth is the outcome of increase efficiency in tax administration from the deployment of a more enhanced custom system Asycuda World and the systematic reduction of fuel subsidy in 2023. Non-tax revenue recorded an overperformance of 31%, reaching D3.89 billion in 2023, compared to a budget of D2.97 billion. With non-tax revenue from MDAs growing by 2% against the budgetary target of D2.13 billion compared to an actual outturn of D2.18 billion,” Minister Keita reported.
He highlighted that non-tax revenue from GRA grew by 104%, reaching D1.72 billion against a budget of D841.4 million.
“This growth is on account of impressive performance from customs processing fees and fuel levy,” he disclosed.
He said budget support has exceeded by 48%, attributable to the good performance in the December disbursement of budget support amounting to D4,085 million.
