Possibility found to implement new EU funds projects in 2010
On Tuesday, February 23, Minutes-Decision of the sitting of the Cabinet of Ministers (CoM) prepared by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) envisaging prioritisation of state budget financing to implement projects co-financed from the European Union (EU) policy instruments and other foreign financial aid in 2010 has been adopted by the CoM.
The MoF has reviewed current budget for the projects and re-structured it according to current situation finding new possibilities to implement new projects with high stage of readiness which are important for the economic development (although the total budget financing will note change).
The MoF has taken into account that in some budget programmes in 2010 there is a possibility of savings because in the end of 2009 there was an unexpected possibility to get additional budget resources to implement EU funds projects within the framework of the defined budget deficit, therefore the financing need for 2010 was reduced. Additional savings were also found due to the changes in the project implementation schedule (reduction of costs, project delays, contract cancellation, challenged procurements etc.).
The government decided to re-structure the planned surplus in the joint programme “The financing to be re-distributed during the annual state budget execution process” as follows:
178.2 million lats for the European Regional Development Fund, European Social Fund, and Cohesion Fund activities in the programming period 2007-2013;
13.9 million lats for the approved European Economic Area Financial Mechanism, Norwegian Financial Mechanism, Latvian-Swiss Cooperation Programme projects;
5.8 million lats for the implementation of projects and activities financed from other EU policy instruments and other foreign financial aid.
The government decided that the Ministry of Agriculture can allocated 6.1 million lats from the financing granted to the Ministry for other goals (till the reimbursement from the European Commission to finance European Agriculture Guarantee Fund activities in 2010, inter alia the Community’s support programme for the poor and special market support activity in the dairy sector.
Also the government decided to allow the ministries to redistribute their budget resources among the EU funds activities and projects under their management without additional decision of the CoM on the basis of the resources redistribution request submitted to the MoF. Therefore the resources redistribution process will be notably simplified ensuring enhanced project implementation.
As it was announced before, in state budget for 2010 will be approximately 400 million lats allocated only for the EU funds projects approved until September 2009. However developers of other and new projects (currently in the planning, development or evaluation stage) should wait until the financing will be saved in other EU funds projects in 2010 or they should invest their own resources and declare their expenditure to receive reimbursement from the EC.
