The government has disbursed 1.35 trillion baht from the fiscal 2024 budget between Oct 1, 2023 and March 8 this year, according to the Comptroller-General's Department.
Patricia Mongkhonvanit, director-general of the department, said though the draft 2024 Expenditure Budget Act is still under consideration by the House of Representatives, the Budgetary Procedure Act of the Budget Bureau stipulates that in such cases, the government can utilise the previous fiscal budget act to bridge funding gaps, not exceeding two-thirds of total spending, aiming to ensure continued operations without interruption.
However, investment expenditure is only allowed for projects that have signed contracts.
According to Mrs Patricia, based on the fiscal 2023 budget, the Budget Bureau allocated an expenditure budget totalling 1.83 trillion baht for the period, as the 2024 budget is being reviewed.
Of this amount, regular expenditure accounted for 1.68 trillion baht, while investment expenditure totalled 155 billion baht.
Regarding the disbursement, 1.26 trillion baht, or 75.5% of the total allocated regular expenditure budget, has been disbursed, while 81.9 billion, or 52.7% of the total allocated investment budget, has been disbursed.
She said budget disbursement will be based on the success of projects, and be divided into instalments.
Analysing the investment budget, the proportion of allocated funds disbursed by the Budget Bureau from Oct 1, 2023 to March 8, 2024 is 52.7%, higher than the corresponding period of fiscal 2023, which was 32.6%, said Mrs Patricia.
The bureau authorised the use of the previous fiscal year's expenditure budget for October 2023 to May 2024, awaiting enactment of the fiscal 2024 Budget Act.
Previously the Comptroller-General's Department implemented several measures to accelerate expenditure of the fiscal 2024 budget, such as resolving issues related to appeals by unsuccessful bidders for government projects, which caused investment projects to be halted until an outcome on the appeal is decided.
This bottleneck was solved by decentralising the authority to address appeals at the regional level.
The draft 2024 expenditure budget calls for a total budget of 3.48 trillion baht, marking another deficit year for the government.
The budget plan calls for borrowing 693 billion baht to offset the deficit.
Key expenditure aimed at stimulating the economy includes investment expenditure, set at 717 billion baht for fiscal 2024.
The department set a disbursement target for investment expenditure in fiscal 2024 of 75%.