According to the order issued by the Latvian government, the state budget program for emergencies will be expanded by EUR 300 million this year.
The budget increase is related to the plan for operational response and allocation of necessary funding for the measures ministries in Latvia plan to employ in order to overcome the challenges caused by Covid-19 in their respective sectors and overcome the crisis.
Financing will be provided in accordance to the ministries’ needs.
The budget program for emergencies received funding of EUR 1,626,729,748 this year. The remaining amount, as of September 29, is EUR 26,815,052.
The increase of funding will take into account the fact that the Ministry of Finance has received and continues to receive new funding requests in different stages of approval, as well as the funding requests from other ministries in accordance with the recent decisions made by the Cabinet of Ministers.
The government has ordered the minister of finance to inform Saeima’s Budget and Finance Committee regarding the decision to increase appropriation. If the committee does not raise objections within five work days, the minister is to execute increase of appropriations.
As previously reported, the state budget’s program for emergencies received EUR 614.29 million in Q2, according to information compiled by the Fiscal Discipline Council.
Initially it was planned to allocate EUR 26.7 million for the budget program for emergencies this year. However, the Covid-19 crisis forced the government to increase this budget program several times, increasing the total financing amount to EUR 1.626 billion. (BNN/Business World Magazine)
