The central government initially granted 109 billion kyat to Arakan State for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, but the state government wasn’t able to manage the funds properly and 13.18 billion kyat was left unused.

U Aung Mra Kyaw, a lawmaker in Arakan State’s parliament, said that Arakan State was allocated 109 billion kyat for the previous financial year because the state government asked for a higher amount.

“There are 25 sectors for which the state government asked for money and the Arakan State Parliament passed a budget based on [the estimated cost of the projects it planned to carry out in these sectors]. But since the state government wasn’t able to use all its allocated budget the surplus amount will now go to the central government,” said U Aung Mra Kyaw.

Describing the incident as a great loss for the poverty-stricken state, U Aung Mra Kyaw said the construction ministry has already returned more than 10 billion kyat that remained unused at the end of the fiscal year.

The state parliament member also revealed that over 40 billion kyat was allocated for projects that were supposed to be managed by the construction and communication departments, but half of these funds weren’t used either. U Aung Mra Kyaw raised these issues in parliament on August 21st, but no satisfactory response was provided by the relevant state ministers.

In the previous (2012-2013) fiscal year, the Arakan State government had to return around 9 billion kyat to the union government, according to a state government report.

For the current fiscal year (2014-2015) Naypyidaw has allocated 198 billion kyat to Arakan State, and U Aung Mra Kyaw said that “We will observe how efficiently the new chief minister of Arakan State (U Maung Muang Ohn) spends this year’s budget for the benefit of the people,” indicating that the state’s former chief minister, U Hla Maung Tin, wasn’t competent enough to manage the state’s budget.