While the South Sudan government is closing down the 2024-2025 budget in July (Next month), public has been urged to express views on how best the 2025-2026 budget will look like.
In November 2024, South Sudan Parliament approved 4.2 trillion South Sudan pounds as National Budget for 2024/2025.
Although many questions remain unanswered regarding how the 2024-2025 National Budget was spent, the Budget Drafting committee at Ministry of Finance and Planning as well as parliamentary committee on Finance have started drafting the new budget for 2025-2026.
In order to incorporate public views in the Budget for 2025/2026 expected to be discuss in parliament this month (June), South Sudan government has opened up to the Civil Society to engage the public to express their views.
The public views would have the Budget drafting committee on how best the country can have 2025-2026 budget.
Civil society Activist, Edmund Yakani who is also the Executive Director for Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO) called on Members of the public to express their views on how the 2025/2026 budget will look like.
“I would like to take this opportunity to ask Citizens who want to make an observation or want to raise their opinions on the content of our financial year 2025-2026” Yakani said
“We have the copies in our office come and submit to us your opinion as a citizen on the financial year bill 2025-2026 and we shall compile it and present it during public hearing” he appealed
He added that such views will be use by the civil society during the public hearing of the budget expected to be organized by the parliament so soon.
How the Country’s budget gets prepared
1. Ministries, commissions and Agencies submit their estimated budgets in figures to the Budget drafting committee in the Ministry of Finance and Planning.
2. The Budget drafting committee add all the figures and come up with single, the total amount as the estimate of the country’s budget.
3. The budget committee submit the figures to Parliamentary committee on Finance and Planning to deliberate on it before tabling it in the National Assembly.
4. Then the Finance committee in the parliament table it in the parliament during parliamentary sitting for discussions and to be approve or pass.
5. After tabling it before it is passed or approved, the parliament conduct public hearing of which members of the public represented by Civil society engage to express their views to be incorporated in the budget
6. The parliament deliberated and passed the budget of the country.
7. The income generating institutions guided by the South Sudan Revenue Authority (SSRA) will now generate the money to be collected by SSRA then give it back to the spending Agencies to implement the country’s program.
