House passes K24 million budgetBy New Dawn Media:BOUGAINVILLE...

House passes K24 million budget
By New Dawn Media:
BOUGAINVILLE House of Representatives successfully passed its supplementary budget of K24 million last Friday.
The budget comprising K15 million of Bougainville’s restoration and development grant and K9 million from other sources is geared towards investment and the consolidation of peace and development of the automous region.
But Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) finance minister Albert Punghau has advised that with only a month remaining to the end of this year, not all projects that received funding would be implemented and completed on time.
He added that a significant portion of the budgetary allocations have been towards meeting contractual obligations of the ABG.
Punghau said this meant that resources have to be made available to complete development project that have remained incomplete in the past three years because funds were re-directed to other priority areas.
He summarized the expenditure of the 2011 supplementary budget as follows:
• Headquarter operations for region wide projects (K6, 058,000)
• North Bougainville (K3,501,800)
• Central Bougainville (K2,719,300)
• South Bougainville (K2,720,900)
• Buka Ring Road Sealing (K5 million)
• Panguna Mine Negotions (K2 million)
• ABG Establishment Grant (K1 million)
• Panguna Peace Process (K1 million)
Punghau added that other strategic expenditure items in the budget include:
• Constituency Support Grant (K1,025.000)
• Bougainville People’s Congress Entitlements (K860,000)
• Bougainville Export Import Corporations (BEIC) shares purchase (K500,000)
• Panguna Mine Negotiations (K2,500,000)
• Support to Parliamentary Services and Bougainville Executive Council (K500,000)
• Completion of President’s Office (K701,000)
• Konnou Peace Process (K100,000)
This is the first supplementary budget to be approved by the Momis/Nisira government since their election to office in June last year.
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