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The National Elections Commission (CNE) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) are working on restructuring the budget for next year’s municipal elections, with a view to defining priority expenditures, in view of the current deficit.
CNE spokesman, Paulo Cuinica, told ‘Noticias’ yesterday that the work was already at an advanced stage.
According to Cuinica, the restructuring implies ascribing funds to the schedule of activities already designed by the electoral management bodies to give the government prior information on the expenses to be made in the context of preparations for the municipal elections scheduled for 11 October, 2023.
Of the 9.7 billion meticais needed to fund the elections, 3.2 billion meticais are earmarked for activities which are programmed for this year and include the installation of the electoral bodies and the training of personnel working in the provincial and district election commissions.
However, from the budget foreseen for this year, the government has so far managed to provide only one billion meticais, which leaves a deficit of 2.2 billion meticais.
“We had a budget in which we said, for example, that we need these many vehicles or this much money to pay salaries and subsidies. But the fundamental element was missing, which is the distribution of the budget in the schedule [calendar] to allow the visualisation of what is prioritized each week or month, and so on. This exercise is important, especially at this time of scarcity of resources,” Cuinica said.
He added that the work in progress is part of the search for solutions to fill the budget deficit, since, according to him, “it is necessary to find sources from which to bring the missing funds because the elections are unavoidable”.
It should be noted that the electoral bodies plan to spend the remaining 6.5 billion meticais next year, in the final phase of the process.
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