Amid the public outcry on the social media over the slashing of the travel allowances for the civil servants, the Finance Minister, during the last Meet the Press, said this was done because of the COVID’s toll on the economy. The Minister also said that the Members of Parliament have also cut down on the duration of their constituency visits along with their DSA.
With no major improvement in domestic revenue performance, Lyonpo said no budgetary agencies will get supplementary budget. This will also be applied to the parliamentarians. The MPs have also cut down on their tours and their DSA slashed as per the notification of the Finance Ministry. Lyonpo said although the two houses did their budget rationalization before the notification from the Finance Ministry, the MPs have to stick to the block grant.
“They did the rationalisation. But I have fixed a condition to them. As long as you remain within the ceiling provided to you as a block grant, with a strict caution that no budgetary agencies including NA and NC will get supplementary budget. They have to cut down the number of days and they will be paid as per the notification of the Finance Ministry,” said Namgay Tshering, the Finance Minister.
Lyonpo said the notification was sent after close consultation with the 10 ministries. The ministry allocated the recurring expenses as block grant which gives the budgetary agencies the prerogatives to use the fund as they desire but within a ceiling provided to them. According to the Finance Minister, this flexibility will cause inequality as agencies with more donors will spend more while some will have to cut down on the expenditure.
“The Budget Appropriation Act for the fiscal year 2020 and 2021 empowers the government to further rationalise if the domestic revenue performance does not improve. Now if you look into the first and second quarter, domestic revenue did not improve. So that’s why we were worried that we may not even achieve the domestic revenue as we have forecasted. Therefore we had consulted the agencies how best we can further rationalise,” Lyonpo said.
However, with the end of the second quarter of the current fiscal year, the Finance Ministry is planning to send another notification with regard to TA/DA.
“The domestic revenue performance did not improve much but it remained constant as we projected. This means we will again re-notify to the budgetary agencies to provide TA/DA as per the Pay Revision Act. However, it should remain within the block grant. There is no way to get a supplementary budget,” Lyonpo added.
The Finance Ministry sent a notification in September asking all the government agencies to adhere to a uniform monthly travel allowance irrespective of position level.
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