AMMAN —
Finance Minister Mohammad Al-Ississ on
Wednesday said that “Jordan was not and will not be a prisoner of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank” noting that “Jordan owns its
decisions from A to Z”, according to Al-Mamlaka TV.
اضافة اعلان
At a meeting of the government’s economic
team with the Finance Committee of the
House of Representatives to discuss the
draft general budget and budgets of government units laws, Ississ said that
“the present situation for most of Jordan’s revenues from indirect tax sources
is not sound”.
“It cannot be said that the current budget is
traditional because it is the first budget in years that exceeded the level of
expenditures it had committed to without raising taxes,” said the minister, who
also ruled out “an increase in salaries this year due to the challenges of the
public debt and the deficit”. Such increase was a Finance Committee demand for
public sector salaries.
Ississ pointed out that “all the observations
made by the Finance Committee goes in parallel with what the government agrees
on in terms of not raising taxes and heading toward fair direct and indirect
taxes”.
He also said that using capital spending to
stimulate growth, and thus stimulate investment and job creation, is in the
interest of the citizen.
“With regard to capital spending, we cannot
say that this is a traditional budget; it is a budget that raises capital
spending by 43.6 percent, which is a historical level,” said the minister,
adding that the government works to achieve justice by distributing the tax
burden and prosecuting tax evaders.
Issis said that “sales taxes are not equal to
the level of income, and therefore the proportion on spending of the middle
class, from income, is much higher than that of the upper class, and therefore
sales taxes are regressive and unfair. That is why the government reduced a
large part of indirect taxes, including customs and taxes on food essentials”.
“We did this in a way that does not
negatively affect public finances, by combating tax evasion,” the minister
said, adding that this year’s budget “cannot be described as traditional,
because it is the first budget that not only achieves the level of revenues that
the 2021 budget committed to, but exceeded it without this government raising
any existing tax or fee,” said the minister.
The government worked to “maintain the levels
of public debt service”, which again makes it budget untraditional, “being the
first budget where the public debt service is reduced at a limited rate of JD24
million, and the first time it decreases due the great efforts made by the
members of this government”, said Ississ.
According to the minister, “the
Ministry of Planning worked hard to obtain soft loans to replace the high-priced loans and
interest”.
“Jordan is stable, and is one of the few
countries in the world whose credit rating increased; Fitch Ratings raised its
rating on Jordan to stable, and on the same day oil countries dropped their
rating,” said Ississ.
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