Five priorities have been selected for the next budget, the budget for the year 2010, reports the local press (Standard, 4.08.2009). The Vice-Minister of Finances, Sherefedin Shehu, has announced that the upcoming budget will have a social character. Education, Health and Defense will be given particular attention. But as concerns the overall volume of investments, the development of Infrastructure will be the number one priority draining the largest investment. It will be followed by Education, Defense, Health and Agriculture.
Capped Budgetary Lines
The ordinance issued by the Ministry of Finances states that the requests made by public institutions will be capped and expenditure ceilings (caps) will be fixed. Standard writes that such, “Ƭines as are the investments based on the budgetary realizations of this year will be planned on the decreaseŢ According to the newspaper, the only ones that will not be touched decreases are the five named governmental priorities.
Investment hierarchy
From over 45 billion Albanian Lek (ALL) that make up the budget of the Ministry of Public Works, Transports and Telecommunications (Ministria e Pun췥 Publike, Transportit dhe Telekomunikacionit, MPPTT), nearly 40 billion ALL will go to investments.
Second on the investment priority scheme of the government is the Ministry of Education, (Ministria e Arsimit dhe e Shkenc쳬 MASH). With an overall budget of 47 billion ALL, its investments will reach nearly 10 billion ALL.
Defense comes third. The Ministry of Defense (Ministria e Mbrojtjes, MM), with a total budget of nearly 26 billion ALL will dispose nearly 7.5 billion ALL of investments. The Ministry of Health (Ministria e Sh쯤etsis묠MSH) will dispose of a budget of nearly 28 billion ALL, out of which nearly 5 billion is new investments.
The list of the priorities of the government ends with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Defense of the Consumer (Ministria e Bujq촩s묠Ushqimit dhe Mbrojtjes s롋onsumatorit, MBUMK). With a total budget of nearly 6.6 billion ALL, this ministry is planed to realize investments reaching nearly 3 billion ALL. The investment ratio for this ministry is almost half of the total budget. Only the MPPTT receives a better ratio with almost 90 % of the budget going for infrastructure development investments.
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[The national currency, the Albanian Lek (ALL), has a current exchange rate of approximately 98 ALL for a US Dollar (USD), and 130 ALL for a Euro.]
