Civil society complains of limited participation in development of Budget Law

The National Council of Nongovernmental Organizations finds that the draft Budget Law for 2013 was approved too rapidly and civil society didn’t have the chance to have its say on the draft. The council members think that the lack of collaboration between state institutions and civil society representatives regarding the development of the state budget will adversely impact its quality, Info-Prim Neo reports. Chairman of the National Council of NGOs Eduard Mihalas told the press on Tuesday, October 9 that the Council members demand the Parliament to organize public hearings within each parliamentary commission in order to ensure the participation of citizens in the development of the most important legislative act for 2013. Valeriu Prohnitchi, executive director of Independent Center “Expert-Grup”, explained that this project should be discussed publicly because it represented the focus of all policies and priorities and the taxpayers should know how their money is spent. “The principle of budgetary transparency is stipulated by the legal framework”, said Prohnitchi. The Ministry of Finance presented the draft budget for 2013 to the Government on September 21. The document was published on the Ministry’s webpage on September 24 and the Government approved it on September 26 and decided to present it in the Parliament, even though the legislation stipulates 15 days for important draft laws to be debated. Moreover, experts claim that the time should be extended in the case of the budget law. “In our opinion, the draft budget for 2013 is based on wholly unrealistic macroeconomic hypotheses, way too optimistic in comparison to the expectations shared by the community of economists in Moldova. One such unrealistic prognosis is that the economic growth in 2013 will be 5%. We expect 1% at most”, said the Expert-Grup director. CReDo director Sergiu Ostaf, chairman of the National Participatory Council, declared that budgetary transparency is a key element that improved society’s trust in the Government and in the state as a whole. “There is a noticeable gap between the government ambitions, statements and actual deeds. This is regrettable and it’s against the public interest”, said Sergiu Ostaf. The draft national public budget (the state budget and local budgets) for 2013 expects revenues of 37 billion lei and provides for expenses of 38.1 billion lei, 7% up on this year. The deficit will decrease by 57 million lei to 1.136 billion.