Geneva – 2019 bonuses allocated to the cyclical reserve

The Geneva Grand Council has agreed to allocate the 188 million francs bonus from the 2019 accounts to the cyclical reserve, in order to mitigate the financial consequences of the crisis due to the Covid-19 epidemic. By 58 yes, against 33 no, it passed a bill to that effect Thursday evening.

Presented by the government, this bill amends the law on administrative and financial management of the state. According to this, two conditions must be met to feed the cyclical reserve: the amount cannot exceed the excess of income and the investments must be entirely self-financed. Self-financing was 96% in 2019.

“This text allows the Council of State to have room to maneuver in presenting a deficit budget,” argued State Councilor Nathalie Fontanet, in charge of Finance. According to her, the next accounts will be in deficit to the tune of 800 million francs, even more than a billion. Despite the crisis, the government refuses the creation of new taxes, said the big money.

898 million

The green light from the Parliament allows the cyclical reserve to pass to 898 million on January 1, 2020. “It is not cash that can be reinjected into the stimulus or an accounting entry, but a cyclical management tool”, put warns the deputy Yvan Zweifel, motivating the refusal of the PLR. The UDC also rejected this legislative change in the name of budgetary austerity.

The left considers that the state must be allowed to face this crisis. It is also a question of giving more means to the public services, because it is them “which made it possible to fight against the pandemic”, underlined Jean Burgermeister, of Ensemble à Gauche. At the request of the PDC, the emergency clause was not accepted, in order to allow the launch of a possible referendum against this modification.

((NXP / ATS)

Published today at 12:40 am-