Hamza: New Government Constitution Delay Could Delay Budget Vote

But, incumbent Finance Minister Bedri Hamza, in an interview for Online Economy, says they have plans on how to act in such a situation. However, he believes the elections will be held within the legal deadline so that new institutions can be constitutionalised.

“I want to believe that the elections will take place in a term of both legal and constitutional optimism, and we will have a institution under-election framework and the budget approved within the current year in order for next year to begin with a new budget approved this year. If, for any reason, the budget is not to be reached to be approved in the current year, it is likely that the first two months of next year will be reached by 1/12, while an additional month will require the Parliament's decision to extend budget use by1/12 and then have a new budget. I believe conditions and circumstances will be created for the budget to be approved in the current year”, he said.

Hamza says that for about two years, the ministry managed to create a financial stability. Says there was no delay in various budgetary lines.

There have been no delays in paying salaries, there have been no delays in paying pensions, and there has been no single reason for any budgetary organisation, neither at the local level nor at the central level to have delays in paying obligations to contractors because the means have been available. The privacy of the state has come as a result of increased revenues, good income performance, and I am optimistic that this trend will continue in the rest of the year”, he said.

The chief of the state “culet” says that during this period macroeconomic indicators improved, the budget rose to about 700m euros, but a tangible economic growth was also noted.

“We have improved macroeconomic indicators. Economic growth is higher than it was when I arrived. It continues to be over 4 percent, for 2017, on the official database that publishes Kosovo's Statistics Agency was 4.2 percent, which was larger than I came in as minister. The estimates are for 2018 - 4.3 percent. However, they expect the Statistics Agency to come up with official data by September or October. The trends are promising if there are developments that are ahead of the” budget, he said.

“We have an increase in Kosovo's budget, which is a significant increase from about 1.7 billion that has been executed the budget, not planned in 2017, this year is planned over 2.4 billion, which is an increase of almost 700 billion within this time period, is an extremely significant increase, and this is not as a result of public debt growth because we have managed to keep public debt under control and currently public debt behaves about 17 or 18 percent of the gross domestic product”, he said.

Hamza says even in terms of banking balances are within the fiscal rule. He even adds that they have about 9 percent of BPV cash available.

The bank's “Bilanci expect to be within the fiscal rule, better than planned, we expect around 1 percent of the primary deficit and banking balance to be brought in somewhere. We have increased cash, the money available to spend is about 9 percent of the local Bruto Product, and we know it's required somewhere to be about 4.5 percent of the local product.”, he says.

The first of the MF expects the second half of this year to have increased realisation of capital projects, for which it encourages budget organisations to exploit available means.

The “could be that this part of the year has a rise or the dynamism of budget execution. All budgetary organisations have available means for spending, and I encourage them this time again like the many other times that they respect procedures and transparency, but to dynamize and increase work and mainly in capital projects”, he said.