DILI, 15 july 2022 (TATOLI)—Minister of Finance (MF), Rui Augusto Gomes revealed, that the Government has made loans and conventional from development partners in the last ten years (2012 –2022) with the amount worth $731.5 million.
“The conventional loans were made to save oil funds, we applied for the conventional loans and we can’t do commercial loans for the reason that otherwise, we don’t have a limited budget to repay,” said the MF Minister at the National Parliament during the state debate this Thursday.
He said that $731.5 million in loan funds were contracted from partners such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank, and also from JICA, but so far the Government has only used $257 million or 36%.
Of all these loans, Timor-Leste began repaying $20.3 million, from 2012 to 2022 at nearly $18.4 million in interest.
Meanwhile, as part of resource mobilization, MF approached partners, and bilaterally, the Government managed to mobilize $180 million from 2017 to 2022. “This $180 million is only given out for free,” said Rui.
He also informed that the Government is preparing to sign an agreement with the United States in the near future.
“The agreement will be realized the next week with the amount worth $ 420 million, this is given free of charge from the United States through the MCC program – Millennium Challenge Corporation,” he said.
Another support is $6.2 million from KOICA providing to support youth empowerment; JICA also supported $1.7 million for the rehabilitation of infrastructure damaged during the natural disasters in 2021 while the Australian Government supported $25 million.
He ensures that the government will continue the resource mobilization, and seek to capitalize on the funds from partners and other resources to safeguard the state’s oil funds.
Mr. Gomes said the Government received revenue of $66.9 million in 2016 while 2018 non-oil income was $57.9 million including payroll taxes, storage, income, and employment services.
“So if we compare the non-oil income of 2018 with 2016 which was $66.9 million, the income of 2016 is higher than the fund of the previous year,”
Likewise, the revenue from Department of Customs and Excise from 2018 to 2020 reached $310 million which means the collection made every year is $120 million every year.
“This is the effort that we made, we add funds to the state budget but on the other hand we are also looking for our funds,” he concluded.
Journalist: José Belarmino De Sá
Editor: Nelia B.
