The Treasurer, Ian Ling Stuckey, was questioned in parliament this afternoon on whether there will be supplementary budget put in this year to realign expenses.
The Deputy Opposition Leader raised this question during question time, raising some serious funding and financial issues that the country is currently facing, due to what he said was the Treasurer failing to generate the projected revenue as per the 2025 National Budget.
“Are you as a responsible government going to bring in a supplementary budget and realign expenses, cut off the Connect PNG scam and focus on districts, provinces and key sectors like the health department?”
He gave an example of the Goroka Hospital’s emergency ward having to close due to no medications to keep it operational. Also, he said the provinces and districts have not received their full funding in the PSIPs and DSIPs, stating that his district just received only K2million recently, not the full amount for the district administration to function.
He said these are serious issues that question the financial management of the Treasurer and the fiscal implementation of the 2025 budget.
“The 2025 budget will fail if we don’t bring a supplementary budget and realign our priorities for the nation,” Nomane said.
In response, Treasure Ling Stuck said, yes, that is on the cards but, there is a process to go through before it can be decided if the need be for a supplementary budget.
“There is a process to follow for supplementary budgets, obviously, we need to finalize mid-year economic outlook report that’s due on the 31st of July, after we’ve received confirmation of where we are on the implementation of the budget, then we can have a more informed view to table a supplementary budget.
At this point in time, we’ve had some very detailed discussions to do so, and at this stage we at the department of treasury are intending to recommend to cabinet for a supplementary, but of course that’s subject to where exactly we are with numbers,” said the Treasurer.
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