By William Madouk
Central Equatoria State Minister of Finance and Planning, Viana Kakuli, has presented a draft budget of SSP 46,173,624,071 for the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 to parliament.
The budget is meant to address challenges encountered during the implementation of the previous budget.
Ms. Kakuli outlined a total resource envelope of 46 billion SSP, with over 26 billion SSP, constituting 57%, expected to come from national government grants, over 19 billion SSP will be sourced from tax revenues.
“The national grants SSP 26,249,651,678 constituting 57%. These projected grants were 5%computation of the previous financial year grants given that, there was no ceiling circulated to the state and the administrative areas in the fiscal year 2024/2025,” she said.
“State own revenues, SSP 19,923,972,393 which constitutes 43%. It was the practical revenue projections by each of the tax and non-tax revenue generating institutions,” Kakuli added.
Breaking down the expenditure ceiling of the budget, the minister stated that wages and salaries got a lion’s share with SSP 23,142,311,498, constituting about 50 per cent of the budget.
“SSP 12,357,528,908 of the total amount constituting 27% is appropriated for the use of Goods and Services,” Kakuli noted.
“SSP 9,733,976,486 of the total amount constituting 21% is appropriated for capital expenditure,” she continued.
Meanwhile, SSP 939,807,179 constituting 2% is appropriated for conditional transfers to the counties and service-delivering units.
To achieve this year’s budget, Kakuli said her docket will pursue policies that raise revenue collection, strengthen fiscal discipline, and improve public procurement procedures to ensure budget-based contracting, value for money, and the elimination of off-budget spending.
“I am therefore, calling upon the hon August House to deliberate and approve the Central Equatoria State draft budget, appropriation bill and the tax rates & charges schedule for the FY 2024/2025 to enable the state to deliver services to its people,” Kakuli stated.
State Parliament Speaker Peter Wani Kulang referred the draft budget to the specialized committee on economics and planning.
He urged the committee to scrutinize the budget and table it before the House after 21 days.
The tabling of this budget comes a week after the National Legislature on approved the 2024/25 fiscal budget totalling 4.2 trillion South Sudan Pounds.