‘Budgets of municipalities expected to total JD400m this year’

AMMAN — The budgets for municipalities for the current year are expected to exceed JD400 million, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported Thursday, quoting a Municipal Affairs Ministry official.

Hussein Mheidat, the director of councils at the ministry, said a narrower budget deficit is forecast this year compared to past years “due to the considerable aid that the municipalities have received”.

The Municipal Affairs Ministry has started studying the draft budgets of municipalities for this year, Petra reported.

This legal measure stipulates auditing the budgets and ensuring their correspondence to the standards and regulations circulated to all municipalities across the Kingdom, Mheidat explained.

The 2016 budgets of municipalities stood at JD361 million, with a deficit of JD10 million and a debt that dropped to JD49 million, the official added.

The total revenues of all municipalities in the Kingdom was JD299 million, while the value of capital projects was JD121 million.

Some 49 per cent of the revenues went to salaries, which constituted 41 per cent of budgets.

The number of employees at all municipalities in 2016 was around 27,000, according to Mheidat.

The government’s financial support to the budgets of municipalities totalled around JD142 million last year, Petra reported.