Draft Budget 2022: Another Ineffective, Unjust and Piece-meal Tool

The draft budget is completely disconnected from the current socio-economic context, fails to address any of the needed reforms & is another ineffective, unjust & piece-meal tool used only to tick the box ahead of the International Monetary Fund official mission and to evade accountability. 

One of its key pillars is to legalize full lirafication of deposits (article 132) in the absence of a proper Bank Resolution Law & restructuring of the banking sector, thereby implementing the most violent & inequitable loss distribution under the unmonitored rule of the Central Bank.

Article 109 of the Budget entitles the Minister of Finance to amend taxes for 2 years, in clear violation of Ar. 82 of the Constitution whereby only Parliament can impose or amend taxes, while Article 133 empowers him to define the exchange rate that shall apply for tax collection.

It also maintains the multiple exchange rates as a policy tool to distribute losses thereby compromising the monetary stability required for recovery.

Lastly, the budget’s figures are unreliable in the absence of a proper macro-framework. We therefore reject the adopted fiscal measures, which are based on an ultra-regressive taxation system & void of any public expenditures for social protection & key infrastructure.