CAIRO, June 24, 2018 (MENA) – The Egyptian parliament on Sunday approved in its plenary session a draft law on an additional funding of LE 70.3 billion to the state budget for the fiscal year 2017-2018. "The last paragraph of the constitution states that the House of Representatives must approve the transfer of any funds from one section of the state budget to another, as well as any expenditure not included therein or in excess of its estimate. Such approval shall be issued by a law," Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel Aal said while debating the government-proposed bill. For his part, head of the parliament's budget and planning committee Hussein Essa said the bill cited some key and influential economic variables, which resulted in the emergence of new financial obligations that were not taken into account when preparing and endorsing the state budget for 2017-2018. Among those economic variables were the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) decision to withdraw additional liquidity from the local market at interest rate exceeding the interest rates on treasury bills and bonds issued by the Ministry of Finance by about 3-4%, he added. The additional appropriation of LE 70.3 billion will be distributed as follows: - A sum of LE 57 billion will be allotted to coping with the increase in the interest rates of the domestic and external debt. - A total of LE 2.3 billion will be dedicated for disbursing compensations for North Sinai and paying some outstanding contributions to international institutions and bodies. - About LE 6 billion will be allotted to covering the state's contribution to raising the CBE capital. - Some LE 5 billion will be allocated to settling the installments of public debt; Arab states' deposits and the amortization of premium on some bonds.
