Jonglei state tables SSP 327 million draft budget
July 8, 14 (BOR) – South Sudan’s Jonglei state budget has tabled its draft SSP 327 million budget for the 2014-2015 financial year, now before a special committee for review, officials said.
The draft budget war looked in to on Saturday and referred to the technical committee for further scrutiny prior to its discussions by the council of ministers within 10 days time.
State minister Dhano Obongo said the new budget would surpass that of the previous year, which was estimated at SSP 264 million.
“The ministry of finance has presented the budget, which involves bulky amount of money granted by the national government, a special committee, technocrats, which is composed of experts from all the ministries, received the copies of the draft budget,” the minister said.
“They will hammer out the technical details in ten days, and then they will bring it back to the council to be blessed,” he added.
The new budget, Obongo said, also addresses several development projects.
Budget estimates for internal revenues, for instance, reduced from SSP 28 million to just SSP 9 million in the new budget, due to economic setbacks witnessed during the violence that ruined several businesses.
According to the minister, revenues initially realised from the counties stopped coming in and no reasons were given for the abrupt halt in the monthly collections.
“The only source of revenue is Bor county and Bor municipality. The rest of the counties are not remitting their revenues maybe due to insecurity, even Twic East, Pochalla and Pibor,” said Obongo.
Lack of funds has also been sighted as one of the major setbacks in efforts by state authorities to improve roads and deliver better services to the people.
In Bor town, for example, roads and floods have for the past three years been controlled by the Koreans, Nepalese and Indian peacekeeping troops.
The Korean are currently building a more than 10-kilometre dyke in Jonglei capital Bor to protect the town from floods, which washed away roads, government institutions and displaced the town’s population.
(ST)