The People’s Assembly, affiliated with the Assad regime, approved the draft state budget law for the fiscal year 2022, amounting to 13 trillion and 325 billion Syrian pounds, in the investment and current sectors. This amount is 4 trillion and 825 billion pounds less than the state budget for the current year, 2021.
The draft law set the appropriations for current operations at about 11 trillion and 325 billion Syrian pounds, and the appropriations for investment operations at two billion pounds. The total deficit amounted to 4 trillion and 118 billion pounds, according to what was reported by the regime’s news agency, SANA.
According to the official exchange rate of the U.S. dollar, next year’s financial budget amounted to about 5.3 billion USD. However, the 2021 budget, according to the exchange rate when it was approved, was about 6.8 billion USD, one and a half billion dollars less than the current year’s budget.
The minister of finance in the regime’s government, Kinan Yaghi, estimated the amount of social support in the budget at 5 trillion and 529 billion Syrian pounds. He stressed that “social support is a fixed policy that will not be touched, and the government is implementing a new approach to the issue of support with the aim of delivering it to its beneficiaries.”
Read Also: Syria: Deficit Larger than Announced; Minister Reveals How to Cover it
According to SANA, the Budget and Accounts Committee released its report on the draft budget law. It said that the law aims to “work to raise salaries and wages for state workers, increase the wage cap for all worker groups, raise the minimum income tax-free threshold on salaries, limit the continuous rise in prices and then work to reduce them, and maintain an overall focus on encouraging production.”
Yaghi has previously announced that the estimated deficit in the draft budget will be covered by 600 billion pounds borrowed through treasury bonds, and about 500 million are external resources, and the rest will be covered through the Central Bank of Syria as credits taken from the reserves in the bank.
The Supreme Council for Economic and Social Planning, affiliated with the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, approved the initial appropriations for the 2022 draft budget in mid-October. The People’s Assembly did not make amendments to its total value, and the draft became a law after it voted and approved it.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
