Non-oil revenues increase by 41% in last fiscal year to reach KD 2.4b
This news has been read 7916 times!
Move reflects success of govt plans to diversify sources of income
KUWAIT CITY, July 31: The non oil revenues increased during the last fiscal year by 41% to reach about 2.4 billion dinars, compared to revenues of 1.7 billion in the fiscal 2020-2021, which is the highest level in 7 years, and reflects the success of government plans towards diversifying sources of income to increase the proportion of non-oil revenues in the general budget, reports Al-Qabas daily quoting reliable sources. The decline in oil prices and the increase in the budget deficit in recent years prompted the government to move towards increasing budget revenues by taking many measures and directing government departments on more than one occasion to enhance their non oil revenues, in addition to obliging them to develop a vision to diversify their annual revenues, which has finally borne fruit.
The sources pointed to a number of reasons behind this jump in non-oil revenues during the past year, including electronic transformation, debt collection, new services, raising the efficiency of debt collection. The transformation of many government agencies to providing their services electronically has strongly contributed to increasing the revenues of these agencies by adhering to the procedures for electronic collection of fees imposed on their services. The budget suffers from the accumulation of financial covenant accounts and debts owed for many years, as the total debts owed to the government at the end of the last fiscal year 2020-2021 was about 1.7 billion dinars, an increase of 5.5% over the debts owed during fiscal year 2019-2020, during which they recorded 1.6 billion dinars.
Among the measures taken by the Ministry of Finance to collect the outstanding debts, was by addressing the stakeholders to pay the money and stopping any transactions for those who are in arrears until the payment of the required dues was completed, and addressing the relevant authorities (the Public Authority for Agricultural Affairs and Fish Resources and the Ministry of Electricity and Water) not to complete the procedures for contractors, except after verifying the payment of contractual dues, as well as taking legal measures against those who are in arrears and referring them to the judiciary.
Services
Several government agencies announced the provision of new services to the public that included increases in the prescribed fees, including the Ministry of Health, which increased the fees it offers to resident beneficiaries, in addition to several other bodies such as: the Ministry of Interior and others. The sources said that the Cabinet some time ago addressed all ministries and government agencies to commit themselves to enhancing their revenues to support the government’s tendency to enhance their non-oil revenues, in addition to obligating them to develop a vision to diversify their annual revenue sources provided that the implementation of services that do not require legislative amendments, such as violations, fines, and transactions related to electricity and water.
At the beginning of last year, the Ministry of Finance worked to take concrete steps to collect state funds and outstanding dues (debts) by implementing a government program to raise the efficiency of collection, including dealing with the accumulated debts of government agencies and working to collect them by modern electronic means; an inventory of bad debts that lack of data to facilitate the process of following up and collecting them; providing a unified portal for collecting government agencies’ revenues and providing aggregate and detailed data on the volume of debts in the parties participating in the project
This news has been read 7916 times!
