Ramallah – 20/9/2022 – This week, MIFTAH released the 2022 Citizens’ Budgets for several social sector ministries, as part of its cooperation with UNDP and its social justice program interventions in public fiscal policies. The objective of this program is to promote standards of international transparency in public spending policies, to guarantee standards of social justice in public policies through providing facts and figures and strengthening the oversight role of civil society institutions.

The Citizens’ Budgets this year included the Labor, Education, Health, Finance and Social Development Ministries, as part of cooperation with official institutions in the social sector. The value of the citizens’ budget comes from the fact that it is a simplified document highlighting the ministry’s budget for a specific fiscal year. It shows how the funds are distributed according to programs and provisions, planned expenditures and developmental projects in each ministry. This allows citizens to monitor public funds and how they are distributed to the various official institutions in order to promote the participation of citizens and various social sectors in the planning of general budgets in a way that takes into consideration their needs.

The citizens’ budget shows the share of each ministry in the social sector in the overall general budget, which was ILS19 billion in 2022. The Health Ministry’s share was 12% of overall public expenditures, with a budget of ILS2.1 billion shekels. The health care services program took the lion’s share of the Ministry’s budget, or 76.8%.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education’s 2022 budget was ILS3.4 billion, or 18.7% of overall public expenditures and distributed over six main programs. The primary education program took the lion’s share of the budget, at 52.82%, while the vocational education program only had a share of 1.94%.

As for the Ministry of Social Development, its citizens’ budget stood at 4.7% of the overall general budget, with the combatting poverty and empowerment program taking the biggest share of 92.7% of the ministry’s allocated budget. Furthermore, ILS489 million were allocated to the cash referral program from which 125,000 Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip benefit. The EU contributed 45% of this amount while the government covered 55% of the program.

The Labor Ministry’s 2022 citizens’ budget was released, with the Ministry’s share only ILS78 million, or 0.45% of overall public expenditures. Most of this money was allocated to the vocational training, operations and cooperation program, at 54.7%.

It is noteworthy that MIFTAH completed the publication of citizens’ budgets this year by posting them on an e-platform, which it launched in cooperation with the targeted ministries, in order to strengthen cooperation and ensure periodic release of these budgets. This followed a cabinet decision to adopt and ratify the e-platform for the publication of public fiscal information and citizens’ access to it.