The continuing budget deficit and high indebtedness, despite the increase in government revenues
Amman Today
publish date 2023-07-01 18:38:52
Compass – Muhammad Saad
The government issues, through the Ministry of Finance, a monthly bulletin showing the performance of the budget, its revenues, expenditures, and deficit, and it contains the developments of the internal and external public debt, which is guaranteed, including internal and external bonds. in financial revenue.
Local revenues during the first quarter of 2023 amounted to 1,995.6 million dinars; That is, an increase of 166.4 million dinars compared to the same period of the previous year. This increase came as a result of an increase in tax revenues by about 77.5 million dinars, and an increase in non-tax revenues by about 88.9 million dinars.
According to the data and the preliminary financial performance of the public finances during the first quarter of this year, which showed a clear improvement in the collections of local revenues, increasing by about 166 million dinars, or 9.1%, compared to the same period last year, to reach about 1.995 billion dinars. However, public expenditures witnessed an increase. To reach approximately 2.388 billion dinars during the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period of last year by 184 million dinars, an increase of 8.4%.
As for the financial deficit, it recorded a value of 382.9 million dinars during the first quarter of this year, an increase of 37.1 million over the previous year.
For his part, Director General of the Income and Sales Tax Department in Jordan, Hussam Abu Ali, confirmed that tax evasion and evasion have been reduced by 50 percent compared to the rates recorded three years ago as a result of the structural reforms initiated by the government to achieve tax justice and intensify follow-up, audit and prosecution processes.
Jordan is one of the countries in the world that relies most on sales tax in achieving tax revenues, as it constituted 71.4 percent of the total tax revenues generated by the government, which is a rate that is higher than that prevailing in many countries similar to Jordan, as this percentage is equivalent to 11.8 percent in Morocco and 12 percent in Morocco. 8 percent in Tunisia.
And the Jordanian Ministry of Finance changed its methodology in calculating its public debt since the beginning of 2021 and made the figure “excluding its debts from the Guarantee Money Investment Fund,” which amounts to approximately 7 billion dinars. It defines the journey of public debt in Jordan from 2010 to 2022.
According to the Ministry of Finance’s bulletin, the internal debt (balanced and guaranteed) amounted to 20.5 billion dinars, while, after excluding what the Social Security Investment Fund holds, it amounted to about 13.72 billion dinars, or 42% of the GDP. The indebtedness of the National Electricity Company and the Water Authority amounted to about 7.4 billion dinars, and the indebtedness of the Social Security Investment Fund at the end of April amounted to 7.23 billion dinars.
Changing the methodology for calculating public debt took place in agreement with the International Monetary Fund, so that government debt is excluded from itself as a ratio to the gross domestic product, but it is calculated within the absolute total figure as a committed debt and cannot be ignored or hidden because its installments and interests are included in the financing budget.
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Jordan News
Source : اخبار الاردن
