Asma Marzouq – Palestine Economy Portal

Translated by Tamara Barakat

The current deficit in the Palestinian budget until the end of November 2015 reached 2.403 billion shekels, according to governmental data published by the Ministry of Finance.

The deficit is divided on both the public budget whose deficit was 1.795 billion shekels, and the development budget whose deficit was around 608 million shekels.

The Government estimated that the current deficit in the 2015 budget would be 4.427 billion shekels, which means that the actual current deficit forms only 41% of the anticipated one.

The financial expert,  Mouayad Afaneh, attributed this to merging the Gaza Reconstruction funds with the development budget, which led to an imbalance in the budget since only 7% of funds embarked for the reconstruction were actually transferred.

According to data, the overall current expenses of the Palestinian Government, from the beginning of 2015 and until the end of November, reached around 12 billion and 104 million shekels, forming 80% of the anticipated expenses for the year in general.

Moreover, according to Afaneh, the Government said that from the beginning of the year, it will try to rationalize the expenses in order to cover the fixed deficit, but this was not clear in the structure of the budget, and so the expenses remained as they are, except for a few differences.

The net revenue collected by the Palestinian Government during the first 11 months in 2015 increased to 10 billion and 332 million shekels, in comparison with the same period in 2014, when the net revenue was 8 billion and 977 million shekels.

The Palestinian Government was able to cover a part of the current deficit in its budget through the grants and financial aid that it received from donor countries, in addition to borrowing from banks.

Media sources had indicated that Saudi Arabia promised to provide a generous amount of financial support to the Palestinian Authority to help it cover the current deficit in its budget. The transfer of this aid will probably reach the Palestinian Treasury during the upcoming few days. This comes after President Mahmoud Abbas’ visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the past week.