Budget distribution in offices of State Information Service across governorates and Egyptian embassies & consulates abroad.

The American University (Finance and Economy Department) organizes this Thu...

Budget distribution in offices of State Information Service across governorates and Egyptian embassies & consulates abroad. The American University (Finance and Economy Department) organizes this Thursday Seminar on Ministry of Finance’s initiative to strengthen transparency with releasing “Citizen’s Budget”, to involve citizens in formulating financial policies and future trends.  A number of students and academic staff in both American and German Universities in Cairo are invited to that event. The seminar informs the students of both universities about Citizen’s Budget initiative and gives the opportunity to discuss items and trends of the State’s General Budget for FY 2014/2015 and the most important updated procedures of budget fiscal control. First deputy to the head of macroeconomic policies Unit in Ministry of Finance, Sarah Eid, declared that such seminar shall be within a number of events sponsored by Ministry of Finance in the context of social dialogue established by the Ministry to ensure success of financial and economic policies and promote social consensus. She said that Citizen’s Budget includes a simple explanation of all aspects of the State’s General Budget, its essential programs, especially social programs, as well as a detailed explanation of the most important reform procedures taken by the Ministry to address macro-financial imbalances in the economy and the main reasons for such procedures. She explained that Citizen’s Budget also contains anti-poverty measures improving social protection for the most care needy categories, implemented by the government through increasing expenditures on subsidy, grants and social benefits, whereas 234 billion EGP, i.e. 29.6% of total public spending, is allocated for such chapter in the new budget, including many programs such as supply commodities subsidy benefiting 18.7 million families, annually provides 465 EGP per capita. In addition to 6.7 billion EGP is allocated for Health Insurance Program, 3.4 billion EGP for farmers’ subsidy; including subsidy of domestic wheat, exempting  defaulting small farmers from their indebtedness in PBDAC “Bank for Credit and Agricultural Development”  and interest rate variations on  farmers’ loans and cotton price variations. She added that social protection allocations also include about 100 billion EGP for  petroleum products subsidy, 27.2 billion EGP for electricity production subsidy, 1.5 billion EGP for passengers’ transportation subsidy, 10.7 billion EGP for social security pension, 33.2 billion EGP for contributions in Insurance and Pensions Funds, 750 million EGP for housing loans’ interest subsidy, 150 million EGP for low-income housing, 2.6 billion EGP for export promotion subsidy and 400 million EGP for subsidy of establishing industrial zones. She mentioned that Ministry of Finance, considering the importance of citizen’s budget in disseminating such concepts, distributed a simple manual of Citizen’s Budget initiative; including a brief of this initiative. And it distributes such manual in a number of most prevalent daily newspapers to be widely read all over the country. Also, the Ministry distributed 1500 copies of Citizen’s Budget Manual entitled “Have the right to know your country’s budget” in all governorates through about 80 offices of State Information Services. As well as many copies of this manual were sent to Sector of Emigration and Egyptians Abroad in Ministry of Manpower and Emigration in order to make it available to all Egyptians who continuously visit the consulates abroad.