Abbas adopts the 2025 budget with a financial deficit of around 7 billion shekels …
The Palestinian government announced today, on Monday, that President Mahmoud Abbas had adopted the general budget for the year 2025 with a financial deficit of nearly 7 billion shekels.
The government added in a statement: “The total income expected for 2025 is around 16.041 billion shekels, including the expected local income of 5.807 billion shekels, and compensation income is 10.234 billion Shekels, while total public spending should reach 20.645 billion.”
The press release continued: “In the event that the current Isragal Israeli deductions of compensation money continued, the financing gap will reach 6.923 billion shekels.”
In its declaration, the government declared that this financing gap “without calculating external support, because the government seeks to recruit external funding sources to deal with the possible deficit in the 2025” budget.
The Israeli government continues to deduce money from the tax funds collected in the name of the Palestinian authority for the goods by which it passes to the Palestinian market in exchange for a three%financial commission.
Israel says that these deductions are equal to the money paid by the Palestinian authority to the families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and the families of the Palestinian martyrs.
Despite the issuance of a Palestinian decision to modify the payment mechanisms of these families, it has not yet been applied.
The government has said in its declaration that the 2025 budget aims to “achieve a balance between meeting the growing needs of citizens and the requirements of financial and administrative reform, in the light of the continuous Israeli Israeli deductions of compensation funds, which exceeded 7 billion shekels in recent years.”
The Palestinian government cannot fulfill its financial obligations for more than two years, whether for its employees who have worked to pay a percentage of their wages or the private sector, which provides them with services in the field of health, construction or loans.
Public sector employees have received no percentage of last February salary until today.
The declaration indicated: “In the 2025 budget, the government focuses on controlling public spending and the mobilization of external financing to support priority projects, with the aim of improving the capacity to fulfill financial obligations, in particular the payment of employee salaries and the payment of financial contributions to providers of the private sector and banks.”
The government added that “a set of austerity measures aimed at reducing operational and capitalist expenses has been adopted at least, to counter financial blocking”.
The government has examined some of these measures, in particular “examine organizational structures, integrate or cancel unnecessary institutions, stop accessories, buy government buildings and limit their rental, in addition to suspending the purchase or replacement of government cars, with the exception of the greatest need, and the control of unnecessary travel missions has also been improved, and development expenses to complete the ongoing projects.” (Reuters)
(The dollar = 3.68 shekels)
