By William Madouk
The Economic Cluster led by the Vice President, Dr. James Wani Igga, has passed a resource envelope fiscal year budget totaling 1.6 trillion South Sudanese Pounds for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
According to Lily Albino Akol, the cluster’s spokesperson, the draft budget estimates for the Financial Year 2023/2024 faces funding shortfall, due to the recorded significant drop in oil production.
This came up in the cluster’s ordinary meeting chaired by Dr. Igga, when the cluster listened to the presentation by the national minister for finance and planning, Dier Tong Ngor on Wednesday.
“The Ministerial Economic Cluster in its Ordinary Meeting chaired by Vice President H.E James Wani Igga passed 1.6 trillion SSP as resource envelop for Fiscal Year 2023-2024,” partly reads the statement seen by this outlet.
The Cluster also listened to minister Ngor’s presentation on the ‘quarterly macroeconomic’ and ‘budget performance report fiscal year 2022-2023’.
After the cluster meeting, Ms. Akol who is also the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, said “the 2023-2024, Fiscal Revenue recorded substantial drop in oil production”.
In quest to find more funding for budget, Ms. Akol stated that the Cluster directed the Minister of Finance and Planning to continue seeking for funds to the government of South Sudan.
According to Lily the report would be presented to the Council of Minister for further scrutiny and approval.
South Sudan’s fiscal year begins July 1st and ends the following year in June 30th.
By law, the budget is supposed to be submitted to the national legislature by no later than the 15th of May of each financial year, but this has not been happening for some years now.
Last year, the council of ministers approved and passed a budget of SSP 1.3 trillion for the 2022/2023 fiscal year.
But the Transitional National Legislative Assembly increased the budget sealing and passed it at a tune of SSP 1.4 trillion pounds for 2022/ 2023 with a deficit of 560 billion pounds.
The budget sealing was to be raised through oil proceeds estimated at 715 billion pounds and non-oil revenue sources to the tune of 117 billion pounds.