Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Uzziel Ndagijimana, will on Thursday, June 23, present the budget outlining the government will spend in the coming fiscal year 2022-2023, which starts July. On May 19, Ndagijimana tabled an estimated budget of Rwf4,658.4 billion (over Rwf4.6 trillion) to the parliamentarians, which was later deliberated on by the Standing Committee on National Budget and Patrimony. Later, the proposed amendments to the budget were sent back to the central government to be considered in the final draft that will be read to the joint chamber of parliament. This represents an increase of Rwf217.8 billion or 4.7 per cent compared to Rwf4,440.6 billion in the revised budget of the current fiscal year. The budget will put an emphasis on continuing the implementation of the national strategy for transformation (NST1), the seven-year Government programme running from 2017 through 2024. “The projected activities in the 2022/2023 budget were selected based on their contribution to the achievement of the country’s set targets as planned for in the national strategy for transformation, and tackling the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic,” he told the legislators during his earlier appearance. On the sources of funding, Ndagijimana said that domestic resources will amount to Rwf2,654.9 billion, equivalent to 57 per cent of the proposed budget. Also, the budget will be supported by external financing, with grants totaling Rwf906.9 billion, while loans will amount to Rwf651.5 billion. Overall, domestically mobilized resources plus the external loans the country will repay will account for 80.5 percent of the country’s proposed spending in 2022/2023. It is expected that Rwanda’s economy will grow by 6 percent in the entire 2022, indicating that the country revised downwards its economic growth forecast for this year from the initial 7.2 percent because of global economic challenges such as inflation, the disruption of the supply chain of commodities, and economic impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war shock. Recent data from the National Institute of Statistics showed that Rwandas gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 7.9 per cent to Rwf3,025 billion (over Rwf3 trillion) in the first quarter of 2022, up from Rwf2,588 billion in the same quarter of last year.
