By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 15 November 2013:
At Sunday’s press conference Finance Minister Kilani Ali Kilani said that preparations for the 2014 budget . . .[restrict]will be delayed.
Explaining the usual steps for the preparations of the budget, Kilani said that all departments had received drafts in July in preparation for sending an estimate to the GNC, but that there is a delay in this process.
The Finance Minister blamed this delay on the “modernization” of the various Ministries and their departments. This has meant that in reality his Ministry has had to prepare a third more budgets for 2014, as there are now a total of 30 or so Ministries and bodies with independent budgets. In reality, 1,000 budgets have to be prepared, which need more time to co-ordinate, Kilani explained.
Kilani explained that under new procedures wages can only be paid out using the new National ID Number. However, he revealed that his Ministry has asked the GNC to allow for an exception this year as many citizens had not obtained their new National ID Number yet, despite the fact that over 93 percent of citizens had received their number.
The Finance Minister explained that while chapter 2 and 3 of the budget could be estimated, chapter 1 for wages had to be accurate and had to be linked through the new National ID Number.
To this end, Finance Minister Kilani revealed that his Ministry has put in place a process where it is able to link up to the database of the Civil Registry in order to confirm the validity of the identity of citizens wishing to receive state wages. [/restrict]
