American Expatriate Costa Rica

Government budget for 2017 will be presented next week

Within a week, the Ministry of Finance will present to the Commission on Financial Affairs of the Legislative Assembly the budget 2017, which must be approved by 30 November.

In recent weeks, President Luis Guillermo Solís and the director of the Public Force, Juan José Andrade asked the legislators to accelerate the approval of Companies Act because it would allow the institution to hire a thousand police officers, one of the emergencies the country is facing nowadays.

Due to the delay, a great part of next year budget will be set aside for security purposes: 1,500 officers are needed. However, Solís didn’t give any more details.

Out of the total budget, 95% represents the fixed cost of the State obligations and just 5% is distributed among ministries and institutions.

That is the government’s hard decision: to balance the budget among our ministries. We need to decide what is more important: health or safety? Transportation or housing? To guarantee education or to have the possibility of developing the environment?

wondered president Solís.

crhoy.com