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Press Release
Extraordinary Meeting of the Council of Ministers on January 8, 2021
The Council of Ministers met in the Government Palace, in Dili and approved the Government Decree Draft on the 2021 General State Budget (GSB) implementation, presented by the Minister of Finance, Rui Augusto Gomes.
This Government Decree establishes the rules on the 2021 General State Budget implementation, approved by Law 14/2020, of December 29th, and applies to the bodies and services of Central Administration’s, the Special Region of Oe-Cusse Ambeno’s and Social Security’s budgets.
This Decree intends to guarantee an effective and rigorous budgetary control and, simultaneously, to simplify the procedures of budgetary execution, continuing the changes initiated in the year of 2020, with the objective of facilitating the execution of the 2021 General State Budget by the Public Administrative Sector’s bodies and services.
Amongst the differences related to the Government Decree on the 2020 General State Budget’s execution, the most relevant are the existence of only two financial regimes, the implementation of the program budgeting, the change in the budgeting year’ closing dates, the flexibilization of budget execution and the increase reporting obligations.
Lastly, the Minister of Health, Odete Maria Freitas, and the General Director of the Health Services, Odete Viegas, made a presentation on the plan to introduce the vaccine for the COVID-19 in Timor-Leste. The presentation also included the participation of the representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Timor-Leste, Rajesh Pandav. During the presentation, the different types of vaccine available and which are the most appropriate to the national context were explained, namely due to the storage needs already existing in the country. Short term priorities for establishing the necessary planning and coordination mechanisms for effective vaccine implementation and for identifying priority target groups were also presented. An inter-ministerial technical team will be formed to be responsible for preparing the vaccination plan against COVID-19 in Timor-Leste. END