(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) The Cabinet Sunday endorsed and sent to parliament the 2016 draft general budget Law, which prescribes further spending controls and projects a 9.7 per cent growth and a deficit of JD907 million.
Reviewing the main features of the draft at a session chaired by Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, finance minister Umayya Toukan said the draft projects total revenues at JD7.589 billion and expenditures to reach JD8.496, with an estimated deficit of JD907 million, less than the JD915 million deficit re-estimated in the current year's budget.
A key characteristic of the budget draft for the next fiscal year is a substantial growth in capital spending, which will increase by 20 per cent up from last year's capital expenditures, as these will soar from JD1.096 billion to JD1.311 billion.
Ensour said keeping spending controls in place is a key focus of the budget draft, but yet it is considered a development-based, rather than an austerity budget with an average 18 per cent increase in capital spending in the general budget and the budgets of governmental units.
The new budget will be largely "disciplined", particularly with regard to spending controls, he stressed.
"Had there been no debt interest, estimated at JD1 billion next year, there would have been a surplus in the budget," he pointed out, stressing that the government had sought to scrupulously control the budget and the general debt.
He also indicated that the government had spent over JD456 million in grants from the Gulf Fund for Development in 2014, and that about JD520 million will be spent in 2015 as well as an estimated JD460 million next year. He added that most projects funded by the Gulf grant had been designed and that only JD400 million of the total grant remained to be dispensed in 2017, and by that the government will succeed in implementing the grant's program on time and without delay.
The prime minister thanked Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait for the grant, adding that by 2017 when the whole grant had been spent, the government will submit a statement that all the sums had been spent on due time and "according to the program that had been agreed".
"We heard credit that Jordan is the best recipient of Gulf aid in the Arab and Muslim worlds", he added.
Touqan also said the government had succeeded financially and economically, dismissing as inaccurate reports that the government had not achieved growth, and noting that the country had managed to restore financial and monetary stability as engines of growth.
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