Too soon, perhaps. In time, no doubt. The prerequisites for drawing up the 2024 Finance Bill were prescribed by the Council of Ministers on 26 April. Close monitoring is required.
Recall of facts. The Council of Ministers of Wednesday April 26 predefined the timetable for the drafting of the initial finance bill, PLFI 2024. It is true that the submission of the latter to the permanent office of the National Assembly, in the first place, has always raised waves of discussion. Without the Amending Finance Bill, PLFR abandoned along the way, the designers of the PLFI 2024 had a significant time saving. Everything is going as it was mentioned in this calendar of strict precision. “As part of the work to draft the initial 2024 budget law, the Budgeting Conferences began on June 30 and will end on July 13, 2023.
This is a crucial and essential step in the programming of the 2024 PLFI, during which the heads of the ministries and institutions will meet successively with the technicians of the Budget Department, responsible for programming, in order to see together their budgets for the year 2024 and their Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, for the next three years”, we underline from the side of these interlocutors. “The purpose of these bilateral talks is to study the budgetary sustainability of programming projects as well as the annual performance programs of ministries and institutions. The budgetary actors of these public entities will thus be supported in the programming, allowing a better formulation, in conformity with the texts and the budgetary principles, and to better understand the priorities and the justifications of each budgetary inscription proposal. This step will facilitate the entry into the arbitration phase led by Prime Minister Christian Ntsay scheduled for the month of August “according to the pre-established timing.
Political scope
Everything would be finalized in September to be submitted to the National Assembly at the October budget session. The President of the Republic Andry Rajoelina expressed the wish that all concerned by the PLFI be heard and listened to. This is the very essence of the Regional Budget Conferences, started in Anosy. For its part, the private sector, through its professional groups, has always made proposals in this direction. For example, for this year again, the Syndicat des industries de Madagascar, chaired by Tiana Rasamimanana, suggests an intelligent and reasonable tax regime. Spying on the overall movement, IMF experts still consider the forecasts of a tax pressure rate of 12.7% reduced to Gross Domestic Product, GDP, to be too low.
This suggests other binding measures for taxpayers for the coming fiscal year. In any case, the announcement of this “premature” initiative at first reading may also have a political impact. Leaders send coded messages to anyone who wants to hear them that they will follow through on their terms of office. They do not allow themselves to be intimidated by the “crowd-contacts” of each other. And the good notes from technical and financial partners are put forward to reassure the economic and financial community a few months before the elections. Clearly, the regime in place gives the impression of registering for the duration.