Rama: Reasons why budget revenues dropped

Rama has been accused by the opposition that corruption and robbery are the reason why they failed to collect the planned budget. He explained the reasons why the collected revenues were so low.

“The chaos against the state ended with the past government. The most important decision is related to the support that the Parliament will give to the operation against informality. Today we are ready to continue it, because this process has given encouraging results as regards the past and the future. We are forced to explain to the citizens about what the opposition has considered as theft and corruption. Together with the international experts of the IMF that are assisting us, we have reached a conclusion on why the collected revenues were not according to the plan. There are a series of factors with no relation to te government and administration. The drastic drop of the crude oil and refined fuels in international markets has affected the oil royalty revenues and VAT. Another factor is the energy reform. The local production dropped during the past year and was compensated with more imported energy. The VAT import has an immediate and very high short-term impact, compared to the collected VAT. This year the import of energy has dropped with 47%. We have more domestic production, which reduced the revenues with customs. Thirdly, our economic model focuses on domestic production through a series of measures. This has brought a constant growth of imported machineries that are excluded from VAT. We are convinced that together with the international expertise, this gap will be fixed in a short term. Another factor is the fact that the interest rate of banking deposits has dropped, despite the expectancies. However, this will bring profits in a long-term”, Prime Minister Rama declared.

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