20 December 2007
Bujumbura — Burundi's finance minister, Ms Clotilde Nizigama, has not succeeded in preparing the draft law governing the 2008 budget in time, though she promised to do so in November. The end of the year is drawing close, yet the draft law has not reached the parliament for analysis, amendment and approval. The project law has already been deliberated in a cabinet meeting.
Steering the project law through the parliament will not be easy for the finance minister. There has been a wind of change in the Parliament where the ruling party party, CNDD-FDD, is short of a majority. It is unlikely that it will be possible to force the approval of the budget through parliament. The ruling party has now taken recourse to boycotting activities in bid to diminish quorum, and this has already born fruit: members of parliament did not meet in plenary session today in order to establish a commission to monitor talks between the government and PALIPEHUTU-FNL since quorum was not reached.
The draft law governing the 2008 budget, before any amendment, shows that the deficit will double as to 35 billion francs. The budgets for all ministries have been increased, yet the draft law is not very different from the 2007 budget where the defence and security ministers had the lion's shares of funding.
In the meantime, the approval of the law before the end of this year seems unlikely
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