Books by Abdul Latif Sobh - Christine Sami
The Partners for Transparency Foundation (PFT) said that it followed up on the approval by the Egyptian government last weekend of the state’s general budget for the fiscal year 2015/2016 in preparation for submitting it to the President of the Republic for approval. The Foundation added in a statement today: “Apart from the details of the budget that require in-depth and objective analysis, the Foundation believes that the government of Eng. Ibrahim Mehleb was not keen to provide mechanisms for community participation in the process of preparing the state’s general budget. The political alignment required the government to overcome the gap of absence of parliament. With more involvement of national stakeholders in discussing the budget, and arranging its priorities and biases. Although the Partners Foundation for Transparency (PFT) praised some of the measures taken by the Ministry of Finance before preparing the budget, specifically the issuance of the Citizen Budget Manual, and the issuance of a preliminary budget statement explaining the general framework within which the budget is prepared, and it considers that it is good steps calculated for the Ministry, but it has reservations about not allocating time Sufficient to discuss the budget in the mass media before it is approved by the Council of Ministers and submitted to the President of the Republic. The Foundation called on the Ministry of Finance to issue a simplified guide for the state budget for the fiscal year 2015/2016, including specific numbers related to revenues and expected spending items, in order to achieve the required transparency principle, and to enable citizens to hold government authorities accountable during the next fiscal year. The Foundation stated that this is the fifth year in a row after the January 2011 revolution in which the Egyptian government approves the state budget in the absence of the elected parliament, and with the exception of the fiscal year 2012/2013 in which the parliament participated partly in approving its general budget, all other budgets, including the general budget The next fiscal 2015/2016 was approved without presenting to the elected body that is constitutionally mandated to approve the budget.
