DUBAI: Qatar’s state spending increased 12.7 percent last fiscal year, the lowest rate in 11 years, as slow growth in current expenditure offset a sharp rise in funds spent on infrastructure projects, data showed yesterday.
Expenditure rose to a record high of QR231.7bn ($63.6bn) in the year that ended in March, from QR205.6bn in 2012-13, preliminary finance ministry data released by the central bank showed.
Last year’s spending was 10 percent more than initially planned. But the margin by which actual spending overshot the plan was the lowest in five years, suggesting the government has begun reining in excesses of the previous four years, when on average it spent almost a quarter more than originally planned.
Doha also seems to have accelerated work on infrastructure projects worth roughly $210bn that it plans over the next decade or so, many of them related to Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 soccer World Cup.
Project spending soared 32.7 percent to QR68.4bn last fiscal year, compared with growth of just 1.9 percent in the previous year.
Current expenditure rose 6 percent to QR163.2bn in 2013-14, a sharp slowdown from a 24.4 percent jump in each of the previous two years, because of a drop in interest payments and spending on supplies and services. However, public sector wages kept rising strongly.
State revenue in the world’s top liquefied natural gas exporter grew 21.9 percent to a record QR346.6bn last fiscal year, slower than the 27.8 percent rise in the previous year.
The 2013-14 budget surplus surged to a record QR115bn, or 15.6 percent of gross domestic product, from QR78.8bn, or 11.4 percent of GDP in the previous year. Analysts polled in April forecast Qatar’s fiscal surplus would total 7.7 percent of GDP in 2014-15, shrinking to 5.2 percent in the coming fiscal year.
Soaring government spending, combined with flat production of LNG, falling crude oil output from mature fields and lower hydrocarbon prices, may push Qatar’s fiscal balance into deficit over the medium term, the International Monetary Fund warned in March.
Reuters
