Mamer Abraham
Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) will delay the third reading of the 2023–2024 fiscal year budget due to the change of guard at the national treasury.
The chairperson of the specialised committee on information in the Transitional National Legislative Assembly, John Agany, said the August House had given Bak Barnaba Chol, the new minister of finance and planning, has more time to acquaint himself with the budget for two to three days.
“We are not ready for tomorrow because we need to give the new minister time to look at the budget because he will have the last statement. Stage three is a very critical stage. This is why it has been delayed,” Agany told The City Review yesterday.
“The minister has been asked to familiarize himself with the report and then, within these few days, we will table it,” Agany said, adding that Mr Chol would only need to read the report.
He added that the decision was timely because it would allow the new minister to form an opinion on the policy.
“Minister, of course, you know, is a policymaker, and for that matter, it did not go with the former minister, it remained in the office. So, you need to check and make the last touch, and then he will make the statement,” he added.
“Otherwise, the budget will be alien to him when it goes out, and it will be troublesome to him.
“We need to give him a chance to look at it. We are not depending on him, but we need to put him in picture because he is the one to execute the budget to pave the way for the passing.”
On Friday, the parliament stated that the sacking of the former minister for finance, Dier Tong Ngor, on a Thursday evening, decree would not disrupt the budget preparation.
“Please take it from me; it will never affect the budget process,” Agany told The City Review on Friday.
But before Ngor’s exit, there was the contentious issue of the salaries in the new budget, which split the house as the SPLM-IO and SSOA caucus demanded a handsome payment for the civil servants.
Nathaniel Oyet, the first deputy speaker of TNLA and the chairman of SPLM-IO, said the budget could not also address the key tasks in the implementation of the revitalised agreement on the resolution of the conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).
Upon his swearing-in on Friday, the newly appointed minister for finance, Bak Barnaba Chol, was cautioned by President Salva Kiir not to leave a window for cartels to siphon public funds into their foreign bank accounts.
The head of state directed the new minister to fix inflation and the devalued South Sudanese Pounds to resurrect the economy; which Bak responded to in a reassuring promise.
Source: The City Review South Sudan
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