A municipal council in Bahrain has said it will be forced to axe several public projects as a result of limited funding over the next two years.

The Muharraq Municipal Council held an urgent meeting yesterday (April 16) to discuss cancelling planned developments, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

Councillors said they were expecting funding of just BD8 million ($21 million) in the national budget for 2015 and 2016, which was half of their estimated requirement.

The budget is yet to be revealed, but a decrease in public spending is expected as the government seeks to balance the books in light of lower oil prices.

In December, the Southern Municipal Council announced it would not approve any new publicly funded projects over the four next years due to reduced oil revenues and their impact on national finances.

Cost-cutting measures were the focus of the meeting yesterday between the Muharraq Municipal Council and the Works, Municipalities and Urban Planning Affairs Ministry.

Council chairman Mohammed Al Sinan claimed BD8 million was barely enough to pay staff and fund existing schemes.

“We want to cancel any unimportant projects after reviewing and studying all the projects that the ministry is committed to,” he said.

“Our budget is very limited and is estimated to be BD8 million.”

He said he planned to secure extra funding in the budget, but added if not all non-essential programmes would be scrapped.

“We are hoping to increase it (the council budget) before it is reviewed by Minister Essam Khalaf and approved by the Cabinet - or we will have no choice but to cancel all unessential projects,” said Al Sinan.

“The budget includes covering the costs of current projects and employees' salaries, which of course cannot be reduced.”

Memorials

“The money is for the year 2015 and 2016, which means we have only BD4 million to spend each year.

“We need at least BD16 million to work on new projects and be able to improve our governorate's facilities.

“What we can do is save money allocated for some projects that will cost huge amounts of money, such as importing poinciana trees and decorating the street leading to Diyar Al Muharraq, which has a budget of around BD250,000 alone.

“Memorials also cost a lot of money, but are very important because Muharraq is a historic place and this history needs to be preserved.”

Al Sinan said the council could turn to the private sector to seek additional funding, if state finances were limited.

“Our aim is to find investors to support these projects,” he said.

“The council's budget has been reduced over the years because former councillors did not use all their budget and preferred to save it.

“The ministry therefore cut the budget according to the number of projects they completed.

“Ex-councillors also had problems between each other, which affected the entire council negatively.”

Al Sinan is now calling on the Muharraq Municipality to prepare a presentation on pending projects, which would help the council determine which ones should be shelved.

“We don't have much time until our budget is approved,” he said.

However, he complained about an alleged lack of communication between the council and municipality.

“We requested a representative from the municipality's services department, but no-one showed up at the meeting,” he said.

“Most of the project agreements signed by the municipality and investors are never brought in front of councillors and no-one is telling us what is going on.

“By law, any agreement between the municipality and any other party has to be reviewed by the municipal council, which also has to follow up the agreement - but this is not happening in reality.” - TradeArabia News Service