Govt asks parliament for confidentiality of debt, expenses

The Finance Ministry has asked the Public Accounts Committee of parliament to keep the information confidential after sharing the government's expenditure, revenue and debt policy with the Public Accounts Committee.

The committee chairman, Maamigili MP Gasim Ibrahim, opened the meeting saying the Finance Ministry has shared three documents related to financial matters with the committee. He said the ministry has requested that two of the documents be kept confidential.

According to Gasim, the documents requested by the Ministry of Finance to be kept secret are:

"The Finance Ministry has said that 2 [and] 3 are confidential documents. Then the committee will decide whether they are confidential or not," he said.

The two documents, which the ministry requested to keep confidential under the Public Expenditure Accountability Act, are two statements that the finance ministry is required to share with parliament by the end of July each year. Among them, the fiscal policy statement is required to be published in the Government Gazette once every year.

According to the Act, the purpose of the Fiscal Strategy Statement is to promote public awareness of expenditure and revenue policy and to provide a means of assessing the measures the government is taking to achieve its policy objectives.

The purpose of the Debt Strategy Statement is to provide information to identify the measures being taken by the Government to maintain the public debt on strong principles.

As the ministry had requested to keep the two documents confidential, the committee's meeting was proposed to be kept secret by Baarah MP Ibrahim Shujau. When this motion was first put to vote four out of eight members supported it. When the vote turned out neutral it was re-voted for the second time, and this time five-members of the committee voted in favour, deciding to keep the meeting a secret.

Previously, the Ministry of Finance shared the reports with the parliament and even published them on the website.

The committee on Tuesday also discussed the document sent by the Ministry of Finance at the request of the committee, which contains details of loans taken out by the state till June this year, loans sovereign-guaranteed by the state and loans issued by the state.

The debt-related letter was discussed informally for about 30 minutes with the microphone off.

After discussing the informal section, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament said that the information sent by the Ministry of Finance does not contain the most complete information. So he suggested that it be clarified further.

“I want to clarify who the individual loans have been given to. And the details of the MVR 637 million given to SIFCO. Then, there’s been a lot of loans given to POLCO on several occasions as well. There is nothing here," he said.

Nazim noted:

Saleem supported Nazim's proposal. The proposal was passed unanimously. At the same time, none of the members expressed their views in the official section on the information sent by the ministry regarding the debt.