The 25th session of the National Council commenced today upon His Majesty’s Command to endorse the national budget for the financial year 2020-2021.
“Usually this time around is supposed to be summer session of the parliament. However, due to the global pandemic, the National Assembly could not close its winter session. For the NA it is a continuation of the 3rd session of the third parliament. However, for the NC we could wind up the 24th session before the country was affected by the pandemic. So we are conducting the 25th session of the NC,” said Tashi Dorji, the Chairperson of the National Council.
The Finance Minister will introduce two Money Bills, the Budget Appropriation Bill 2020-2021 and Supplementary Budget Appropriation Bill 2019-2020 tomorrow to the House.
The house will start deliberations on the Bills that the National Assembly passed yesterday from Thursday.
The National Assembly yesterday endorsed the Budget Appropriation Bill 2020-2021 amounting to almost Nu 74bn including the current budget of Nu 32.9bn and capital budget of Nu 41bn. The National Assembly also passed the Supplementary Budget Appropriation Bill 2019-2020 amounting to more than Nu 1bn.
During the last week’s session at the National Assembly, the Finance Minister also proposed seven temporary fiscal measures to meet the cost of recurrent expenditures from internal resources. The measures include rationalizing in-country and ex-country travels, postponing activation of salary indexation to next financial year, deferment of option to monetise vehicle quota, Leave Travel Concession and slashing transfer benefits for civil servant, providing current budget as annual grants to all budgetary agencies and no hiring of a private building for office space.
The National Council will review and deliberate the two Bills and send it back to the National Assembly for final adoption. The National Council will close on the 16th of this month.
Phub Gyem and Sonam Pem
