Changes in government budget
23/09/2014 00:00
The Washington Agreement Must Be Reactivated! 06/01 19:04
The Minister of Finances, Shkelqim Cani, presented at the Parliamentary
Commission of Economy a normative act for the reviewed budget of 2014.
Mr.Cani explained why the government changed the budget:
“The main reason for changing the budget is seeing capital spending with another dynamics in order to withdraw money from projects that have not been realized, and pass them to projects with a better performance”, Cani declared.
The reviewed draft increases the total income with 3.2 billion ALL, or 0.9% compared to the initial budget.
“We will have reallocations with this draft budget. Some elements have not realized the plan, others have exceeded it. The most important thing is that we will not change the total revenues, as it has been done in the past five years”, Cani declared.
Although the total revenues increase, some taxes have a negative progress. Especially the excise, which the government reviewed with 4.3 billion less, mainly due to cigarettes. The Minister of Finances explained this with the high imports of the past year, when suppliers learned that taxes would grow. But Erjon Brace has another explanation.
“The import of cigarettes increased in December with around 174%”, Cani declared.
“I am prone to believe that you have evidence and documents about everything you say. I am not convinced yet that the missing figure at the excise is not fiscal evasion. Cigarettes, oil and beer have fiscal evasion, and this puts blame directly on the fiscal administration”, Brace declared.
The past government signed some agreements with private companies, by giving fiscal stamps in concession and by putting tracers on excise good to reduce tax evasion.
“Was this agreement checked? Is this concession affecting this, or not?”, Brace declared.
“Our goal was to terminate those agreements. We have received some answers and now we are at the negotiation phase. After we close this phase I can explain our decisions in details”, Cani declared.
The MPs of the Commission criticized the weak realization of investments, but the Minister of Finances declared that they will be realized at 100% with the reallocation of finances.
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