2023-05-02 08:58:53
The increase in the budget of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) should occupy the debate at the level of the two legislative chambers from today. This body responsible for organizing the election is asking for a total of 140 billion ariary to be able to organize the two rounds of the presidential election which should take place between November and December of this year. In the initial finance law for the year 2023, voted in December 2022, the budget devoted to this election is only 40 billion ariary.
As the Prime Minister, Christian Ntsay, has already promoted the holding of the presidential election this year, the State will have to find the money to organize it. To do this, it will be necessary to rectify the initial finance law and include the missing 100 billion in the CENI budget. But the main question that the Minister of Economy and Finance, Rindra Hasimbelo Rabarinirinarison should answer is where to find the missing sum, especially since the State seems to be currently having difficulties in terms of finances.
As we have just started the fifth month of the year, the administration is currently struggling to function well because of the financial difficulties the country is going through. At the ministry level, fuel problems are resurfacing. The same is true for other office supplies because the commitment would not be released yet. Some ministerial departments have had to rearrange their budgets.
This difficulty of the State to take care of its other charges speaks volumes, as is the case in particular of the delay in payment of scholarships for students of the universities of Madagascar, the payment of wages for short-term employees (ECD) who could not yet be integrated into the new ELD system, although it was said that no employee should be in this first category anymore.
The Minister of Economy and Finance will have to perform major financial gymnastics in order to find the necessary funds to replenish the fund. It could count on the increase in customs revenue, a sector that seems to be in very good health at the moment. But the galloping inflation, favored by the depreciation of the ariary compared to the other foreign currencies of reference, the euro and the dollar, risks complicating its tasks.
External funding, and especially the basket fund, is also not safe since in reality Madagascar’s financial and technical partners would have imposed new conditions before the cascading release of funding. Citizen education and the registration of voters in the electoral list would be among the first conditions they would have demanded. But obviously, the CENI had a hard time getting by on this level because the citizens in question no longer adhere to the system due to a lack of confidence in the administration.
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