The Royal Monetary Authority (RMA) handed over its highest ever annual surplus cheque worth of Nu 3.011bn to the Finance Minister in the presence of Prime Minister Dr Lotay Tshering, yesterday.
The RMA Governor says it’s one of the unprecedented record surplus surrendering to the government. The highest surplus made by RMA is significant for three reasons.
“Firstly it reflects the adequate level of reserves in the country or RMA. We have invested the reserves and that the investment adds up to the surplus that which we are declaring to the government. Secondly, there is also efficiency and prudence in the RMA management. We are able to manage the reserves very well and trying to get the best returns on those surpluses on a daily basis. That also contributes to the surplus. That’s why over the last four to five years we have been actually breaking the records of declaring the larger surpluses and then surrendered to the government. Lastly, we succeeded in changing our accounting standards. Until now we have been following the gap model of an accounting standard. Now we have moved to an International Financial Accounting standard called BAS (Bhutanese Accounting Standard). So when we shift from the old to the new accounting standard, there is a change in the accounting policy,” said Dasho Penjore, the Governor for RMA.
The BAS transition has enabled the RMA to account realization of gains on net sale of foreign assets amounting to Nu 1.95bn for the year 2018-2019. RMA also made a record-high profit of Nu 1.47bn resulting in the net surplus of Nu 3.011bn.
“This year we exceeded their estimate and it’s going to benefit the government, because government definitely needs money to finance its expenditure. What we hear is that they are having some difficulties in the Mandgechuu estimation, and all those revenues which they have estimated. Because they have overestimated the projects, they are now facing some difficulties. So now our surplus will actually cover that overestimation coming from the other revenue projects. so definitely our Nu 3.011bn will be a very good contribution to the government to finance their expenditure at least for this fiscal year,” Dasho added.
The surplus is surrendered to the government and it will be used as a governments budget.
