Finance minister to deliver Budget Address 2021 today |16 February 2021

A sum not exceeding eleven billion, thirteen million, six hundred and forty eight thousand two hundred and ninety six rupees (R11,013,648,296) is the amount Finance, Economic Planning and Trade Minister Naadir Hassan is authorising to be paid out of the Consolidated Fund for the services and expenditure of the republic for the year 2021.

Minister Hassan will today introduce and request the National Assembly’s approval of the Appropriation Bill, 2021.

It is to be recalled that the delivery of the Budget address was scheduled for February 9, 2021 but had to be postponed after one of the minister’s close contacts had tested positive for Covid-19, as a result of which Minister Hassan had to remain in quarantine for a week.

This year the budget is being presented the same year the money is to be used. It was on November 3, 2020 that newly elected President Wavel Ramkalawan confirmed that the budget for 2021 will be presented in January 2021, instead of the usual end of year, to allow the technical experts at the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Trade to further work on the budget.

For the past three years ‒ 2018, 2019 and 2020 ‒ the appropriation bill was published in late October and not in December as was usually the case.

The sum is almost R2 billion more than the original budget of R9.2 billion budgeted for the calendar year 2020 which was in April revised to R10,447,151,547 (ten billion, four hundred and forty seven million, one hundred and fifty-one thousand, five hundred and forty-seven rupees). The amended Appropriation Act was approved by the National Assembly on April 9, 2020. The amount approved was some R1.2 billion higher than the budget approved earlier for 2020, and took into consideration revised priorities necessitated by government’s response to combat the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and its adverse impact on the national economy.