Government reduces US$918 million in expenses from state departments excluding road development

• 9 April 2020
• Local News
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Samdech Techo has announced that the government has reduced US$918 million in expenses from all state institutions to combat the COVID-19 outbreak; however, the road and canal development budget will be not reduced, as it is a high priority need.

The announcement was made at a press conference on updating the current situation of COVID-19 on the morning of 7 April 2020.
“I hope national institutions at all levels both national and sub-national institutions could understand as the government had to reduce expenses twice. At the first stage, we had to reduce US$443 million and yesterday I just issued another order following H.E Aun Pornmoniroth’s advice, we had to cut down another US$475 million. So, the total amount of expense reduction is US$918 million to combat the COVID-19 outbreak,” explained Samdech.

“The budget that will be given to the state institutions to process their work, we had to take some of that back, including the village funds. However, the budget for some facilities such as roads, canals and waterways will not be reduced as it is needed,” he added.

The government planned to spend about US$8.2 billion in total for the 2020 national expenditure of which approximately US$4.8 billion is state budget stream expenditure and another US$3.3 billion is state capital expenditure. However, due to COVID-19, the government has now decided to cut US$918 million from the expenses to combat the pandemic, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s Budget in Brief Fiscal 2020.

Despite the economic crisis caused in Cambodia by the COVID-19 pandemic, road development projects in Cambodia have not been affected by the virus spread, according to H.E. Sun Chanthol, Minister of Public Works and Transport. (Read more)

• Economy and Finance
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