
Two days ago, the new Minister of Finance, Petrit Malaj, announced the changes in the budget for 2024. This is the second change made to the state budget for 2024. In the official statement, the part of the changes and increase in funds for the Police was launched. State, for old age pensions or investments in Agriculture. What was not stated was that most of the "cake" went to the streets. In the normative act officially published yesterday in the official notebook, it can be seen that most of the additional amount of about 6.6 billion lek goes as an addition to the budget of the Ministry of Infrastructure, which after the changes reached 74.3 billion lek, from 67.7 billion lek.
The entire increase went to the road transport program, which increased by 6.6 billion lek or 65 million euros. The funds for this program with the new changes reach 33 billion ALL from the 26 billion ALL that were in the current budget.
According to the normative act, the general government units can start the fund procurement procedure in September of the current year, if the funds have been allocated/registered in the treasury system for the year 2025 and beyond, provided that this contract becomes effective only after the approval of the relevant budget law". Road investments always remain a problem and why they occupy the largest part of budget investments. Granting of road concessions and postponing several times, even years of works on certain axes have increased the budget debt. But this time too, this sector takes the largest part of the allocation of funds in the amended budget.
Who else "benefits" from the changed budget?
An addition of 600 million lek in the "Capital expenditure" item in the "Management of drainage and irrigation infrastructure" program of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is granted by decision of the Council of Ministers for the financing of facilities, equipment and machinery of the irrigation infrastructure and drainage, as well as flood protection works for municipalities.
A fund of 500 million lek is added to the budget program "Rural development, supporting agricultural production, livestock, agro-industry and marketing" is used for the support scheme with grants for investments in farms, in the full value of 1,500 million lek, which is also financed in the next budget years.".
An additional amount of 150 million lek goes to the "Sports Development" program of the ministry responsible for sports, it is used according to the provisions approved by the decision of the Council of Ministers.
The fund for indexation of pensions is estimated at 4,137 million ALL and the bonus of pensioners 3,650 million ALL. This fund is divided between the schemes, according to the determinations in the decision of the Council of Ministers.
The administrative expenses, as part of the total expenses for the social security scheme, are no more than 3,700 million ALL and are divided according to the schemes, in proportion to the direct expenses.
From the unused expropriation fund in the account of the Bank of Albania, the sum of 8,000 million ALL is transferred to the budget as non-tax income. / VoxNews