Al-Sahwa [Archives:2006/1010/Press Review]

21 Dec.2006
Main headlines

– Al-Sahwa symposium on the European Union report, the JMP considers it fair and the GPC describes it as contradictory and biased

– By-elections, killed ones, bullying and GPC differences

– Physicians and government agree on paying their salaries

– American report: The regime manipulates the issue of political reform

– After a female exposure to torture, legal organizations demand investigation into female prisoners conditions

– Demands for investigation with al-Jawf governor on issues of corruption

– Fathi al-Azzab condemns prohibition of political activity at the university

Writer Zaid al;-Shami says in his article every year the government presents the state public budget to the parliament so that to come out of it without any change or amendment despite that there is a committee formed to discuss the budget and come out with many recommendations and remarks by member of parliament and opposition blocs. What happens is that the GPC absent MPs are recalled the parliament session and they in turn demand quick voting without more of them are able to get informed on components of the budget or read report of the specialized committee. This behavior that is always refusing ideas of others leads to accumulation of mistakes and misadministration of the country's resources.

Criticisms of the budget are repeated to the point that they have become necessities for approval of the budget of the state. Priorities of the budget distribution are unclear. What has been allotted to education in the budget of 2007 is 11% against 21.85 in the budget of 2005, the budget of health was reduced to 3.3% instead of 5% in 2005. Four billion YR was allocated to fighting unemployment where the individual share of it will not exceed one thousand riyals. while three quarters of the budget was allotted to current expenditures. What is allocated for the investment program is not implemented and the parliament recommendations have been repeated on necessity of redistribution of the budget chapters so that to increase investment expenditure in order to create job opportunities on the one hand and to build infrastructures on the other. In addition, the transparency on which all emphasize is weak. The undistributed expenditures this year amounted to YR 268.9 billion in addition to the problem of internal and external borrowing that are growing hugely year after year.

There is a recommendation from the parliament on not depending on oil revenues and to develop other resources in precaution to variable and the consequences of the drop in the quantity of oil production or droop in its prices. But what happened is an increase in dependence on oil resource reaching this year to 70% of the total of resources.
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