Administration expenses freeze

03/09/2012 00:00

The risk of exceeding the legal limit on the debt and deficit has forced
the Ministry of Finance to prepare a package of drastic measures to
reduce expenses.

On August 28, the Minister of Finances, Ridvan Bode, sent an official draft to the Council of Ministers which foresees the freezing of a number of administrative expenses. According to the draft, which is expected to pass soon at the Council of Ministers, any procurement budget funds for operating expenses will stop after September 7th.

The package provides a 20 percent cut of the mobile telephony costs for employees and the freezing of the Special Fund until December 5th.

 The government expects to save 220 million ALL or 2.2 million USD only with these two measures. The draft-decision also has other strong measures for which the Ministry of Finances has not calculated the saving effect in the budget. According to the document, the abroad travel expenses and for state employees will be reduced only to those of a special importance and only for a limited group of employees.

Even those cases will be allowed only with the permission of the Minister or head of institution. A harsher intervention is that on the public employees’ training. According to the document of the Ministry, all trainings or seminars abroad will be completely blocked and the funds of this category that have not been used yet will be reduced to 50%.

The Ministry of Finances says that during the monitoring of some institutions they have noted problems and violations in the way how the legislation for wages and bonuses is implemented. The Ministry says that this decision will restore some discipline of financial expenses so that the foreseen wage increase will not require additional budget funds.

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