Middle East Monitor / August 25, 2022
The Palestinian Authority has spent 23 per cent of its budget on the security sector during the first half of 2022, a specialist team affiliated with the Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN) revealed in a report on Wednesday. Al-Ahly Team to Support Transparency of the General Budget found that salaries paid to security staff constituted 86 per cent of the total expenses of the security sector.
Allocating the largest amount of the PA’s expenditure to security “violates the Constitution,” the team alleged. It also found a large gap between the money allocated for development projects and the money actually spent during the first half of 2022. Moreover, there were large gaps between what is being allocated across several sectors and what is really being spent; the latter is less than the allocations.
According to observers, PA President Mahmoud Abbas approved the 2022 budget after publishing a brief report about it without explaining the terms. He also ignored all of the NGOs and the elected parliament, which represents the taxpayers, whose money constitutes more than 86 per cent of the budget.
