Highlights

The Minister, who was speaking at a public session of the House of Councillors devoted to reviewing the report of the first president of the Court of Auditors presented to both Houses of Parliament on May 6^th on the actions of the Court in respect of the year 2013, stressed that "this performance is also attributable to the improvement of government action, the continuous action of the ministry, and the development of a clear policy in this field".

Other factors that helped to improve the macroeconomic framework, which Mr. BOUSSAID put forward, include the mobilization of various government partners to reduce macroeconomic deficits. He added that the Court of Auditors welcomed the Government's efforts to restore macroeconomic balances in a difficult economic situation at the regional and international levels.

On the other hand, the Minister referred to the efforts made to reduce delays in the preparation and presentation to Parliament of the settlement bills. He specified that for the 2005 Finance Act, it took five years to prepare the settlement bill. "This period has been reduced to one year and 11 months for the settlement bill for the 2012 budget. The regulation plans to submit these laws in a period of two years," explained the Minister.

Recalling that the budget deficit and the current account of the balance of payments reached a peak level in 2012, amounting respectively to 7% and 9.5% of GDP, "which is a critical level", the Minister stressed that the Government took a range of measures to redress the situation, which relate in particular to the regular monitoring of the budget execution within the framework of the monitoring committee and the rationalization of expenditure. He added that these efforts continued in 2014 with the reduction of the budget deficit to 4.9 pc.