The federal government announced its ballooning budget of 117.8 billion Br for the 2011/12 fiscal year to Parliament last week.

The draft budget for next year showed an increase of 40 billion Br, up by 52.3pc, from this year’s budget of 77.2 billion Br.

A year into the government’s ambitious five-year GTP, 23 billion Br has been allotted to recurrent expenditure, 48 billion Br to capital expenditure, and 31 billion Br to subsidies to regions.

Among the additions to the budget is 15 billion Br earmarked for the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that would be supervised by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED).  Ethiopia has made progress in MDGs in the area of education progress was seen in universal primary education reaching 95.9 pc in 2009/2010, Net Enrolment Rate (NER) stood at 89.3 pc  in 2009/2010. In addition the infant mortality rate has been reduced from 77 to 45 per 1000 live births.

In the draft, five billion Birr is allocated for water and energy, up from 2.5 billion Br this year; while eight billion Birr is allocated for agriculture and rural development, up from 5.6 billion Br this year.

A total of 15 billion Br and 18 billion Br is set allotted for education and urban development, up from 12.3 billion Br and 13.8 billion Br, respectively, this year. For defence, 6.5 billion Br is put aside, up from 4.4 billion Br this year.

During the announcement on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, Sufian Ahmed, minister of MoFED, gave a progress report on the work the government has been doing to improve performance, raise revenues, create jobs, and bolster the nation’s economic growth.

The government plans to collect 100.6 billion Br to finance these, as noted in the 121-page budget. Out of the total, 79 billion Br is planned to be collected from domestic revenues and 21.4 billion Br from external assistance.