By Ahmed Elumami
Tripoli, 11 June 2013:
The government has asked the GNC to approve an additional LD 15.25 billion for urgent items . . .[restrict]that did not feature in its original budget. Congress is expected to vote on the requests on Sunday.
“The prime minister Ali Zeidan asked for the additional budget for some item which were not included in the general budget of 2013,” Fareeha Barkawi, a member of the GNC finance committee told the Libya Herald. These covered compensation, urgent development projects and the security situation.
Barkawi explained that the proposed compensation included the settlement of salaries for workers at foreign companies obliged to abandon projects at the start of the revolution. There were also payments ear-marked for Lockerbie victims and extra money for municipalities for rehabilitation schemes.
She added that the finance committee had prioritised the new requests, setting them out over a period of three years.
GNC spokesman Omar Hemidan said that Congress had agreed to vote this Sunday on the additional budget, as reworked by the finance committee He added that the vote required a quorum of 120 members for the additional items to be approved. [/restrict]