Parliament conducts first review of 2017 state budget amendments

During Parliament’s October 5 meeting, lawmakers held the first discussion of amendments to the 2017 state budget with several legislators criticizing that the amendments were not drafted well.

MP D.Damba-Ochir stated that 140 billion MNT has been included in the amendments to fund repayments of concession agreements. He said instead of financing concession agreements, the amendments’ authors should revisit the draft to fund other projects to help resolve other socioeconomic problems.

Legislator Ts.Garamjav said that nearly 100 billion MNT is required to increase the salary of teachers and doctors by 20 or 30 percent, which was not included in the draft amendment while 105 billion MNT has been included in the amendments to finance operational expenditure.

MP D.Sarangerel noted that to increase teachers’ salary, the government and legislature should work together to create a system that rewards teachers based on their skills, performance, experience and other abilities to improve the quality of the national education system.

MP Ch.Ulaan pointed out that amendments to the state budget is carried out to improve the state budget, but this draft is outlined to distribute welfare to people and fund inefficient projects despite a fiscal deficit of 2.7 trillion MNT.

After the first review of the draft amendments, Parliament passed the issue to all of its standing committees, Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee and political parties’ caucuses for further review.