Panama government raises 2022 budget after parliamentary objection

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Panama’s government reformulated the 2022 general state budget and raised it by 0.66%, to leave it at US$25.2947 billion, after the bill was returned by Parliament to increase the amount of operating and investment spending.

The original draft of the budget was presented for an amount of US$25.1266 billion. Still, the Budget Commission of the National Assembly suggested that it be reformulated “in US$560 million, distributed US$141 million for operation and investment US$418.2 million”, an official communiqué said on October 6.

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The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) “made an increase of US$168.1 million for the own income of Central Government and decentralized entities”, informed the Government this Thursday.

“This adjusted budget of US$25.2947 billion, for fiscal 2022, complies with the fiscal deficit levels included in the Social Fiscal Responsibility Law,” the official information added.

The head of the MEF, Héctor Alexander, emphasized that “for next year’s budget we have the challenge of recovering revenues to compensate expenditures” in an environment of crisis that persists due to the ongoing pandemic.

In presenting the original budget proposal on September 28, Alexander recalled that in the last decade in Panama, “the public debt and subsidies tripled and the payroll (of government employees) increased 2.7 times.”

The limitations of the budget “are real, and the current margin of maneuver is narrow since the size of the budget is influenced significantly by the income,” greatly affected by the crisis derived from the pandemic, he added.