The Rwandan Parliament yesterday approved the proposal by the Government to increase public spending for this fiscal year by Rwf141 billion (UGX575b), The New Times, has reported.
While the previous budget for the 2018/2019 fiscal year was slightly over Rwf2.4 trillion, the revised budget is slightly above Rwf2.5 trillion.
According to The News Times, government proposed to increase the budget late last month during a cabinet meeting and went ahead to seek parliament’s approval.
The Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Uzziel Ndagijimana, said the money to cater for increased public spending will be raised through taxes and non-tax revenues, which exceeded government forecasts in the first half of the fiscal year.
He added that the Government is increasing spending in order to support key projects in infrastructure, education, agriculture, and healthcare among other sectors.
“We would like to allocate the money for priority activities in key sectors such as education, agriculture, and new government agencies,” Ndagijimana said.
About Rwf3.3 billion of the budget increment will be used for the next four months to pay teachers’ wages, which were increased by 10 per cent last month, the minister said.
The current budget, which runs up to June 30, 2019, was designed under the theme; Industrialisation for Job Creation and Shared Prosperity in order to emphasise government’s will to invest in supporting local industries as it seeks to bolster production and create more job opportunities, mainly for the youth.
The portion for the development budget has mainly been allocated to boosting youth employment programmes, with an aim to create 216,000 off-farm jobs and empower the youth with new skills.
The Government has also been investing in building roads, increasing irrigation projects, building new and repairing key electricity transmission lines, improving water supply in both rural and urban areas, and building hospitals and classrooms among other priorities in the current year.
