HECTIC WEEK AS MINISTER MPANGO UVEILS BUDGET

Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr. Philip Mpango.

Budget speech for 2017/18 fiscal year and report on the country’s state of the economy is scheduled for tabling in the National Assembly this Thursday.

The timetable for the House’s activities shows that the Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango, will read the budget after the presentation of the economic status report. Key economic areas to be covered by the budget include infrastructure development, energy and minerals projects and industrial projects.

Early in March, in the National Assembly, Dr Mpango read the proposals of the 2017/18 National Development Plan and the country ceiling for next year’s budget. Dr Mpango said the government, in the 2017/18 budget, expects to keep the 31.6tri/- budget ceiling, with the development budget increased from 11.8tri/- in the 2016/17 to 11.9 tri/- in the coming year.

According to the minister, the 2017/2018 is pegged at 31.6 trillion/- whereas internal revenue sources are expected to reach 20.872tril/-. Last week, when tabling budget estimates for the Ministry of Finance in the 2017/2018 fiscal year, the minister said tax collections up to March in the current financial year increased by 15 per cent compared to collections of the corresponding period last financial year.

The government had set a target to collect 15.105tri/- as tax revenue for the year, which ends on June 30, he said.

From non-tax sources, the minister said revenue collections as of March this year reached 500.13bn/- against the 412.23bn/- target, an equivalent to 121.32 per cent of the estimates.

He said the non-tax sources included 352.69bn/- dividend to the government from the Bank of Tanzania (BoT), Inflight Catering Service Limited, National Housing Corporation, IPS, TANICA, TCC, TLLPPL, and TPC. The Minister said other non-tax sources was 136.48bn/- from public parastatals which sent 15 per cent of their gross profit margin to the Treasury.

According to the minister, the government intends to borrow 900 million US dollars (over 2tri/-) from external sources while another 4.434tri/- will be borrowed from internal sources.

He added that 1.9tri/-, an equivalent of 1.5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the internal loans for implementation of various development projects.

Daily News