The 16th Tibetan Parliament-in-exile during its one-day session to pass the budget for the fiscal year 2020-21, in Dharamshala, India, on 17 March 2020. Tibet Sun/Contributor

Tibet Sun Online News

﻿The Tibetan Parliament-in-exile approved an amount close to Rs 2,750,000,000 (36,815,000 USD approx) as the budget of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) for fiscal year 2020-21. The CTA has the twin tasks of attending to the welfare of the Tibetan refugees in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and resolving the Tibetan issue for a free Tibet.

The exile Tibetan Charter requires the Parliament to hold sessions within six-month periods. The budget is considered in the March session, which is attended by 45 members of Parliament at the exiled Tibetan headquarters close to McLeod Ganj, and normally goes for 10 days. However this 9th session of the House was conducted in only one day, due to orders by the local Indian authorities forbidding gatherings of more than four people considering the global coronavirus epidemic.

The matters that had been planned to be discussed in the current session were withdrawn due to the time constraints, and will be brought up in the next session in September.

Karma Yeshi, Finance Minster of CTA, presented the budget. No discussions were allowed by Speaker Pema Jungney, so as to be able to conduct the business in the one day.

In the budget, education tops the list with 22% of the budget, followed by political affairs, administration and home affairs gets 21% each. Health gets 9%, and religious and cultural affairs has been allotted 2% of the budget.

The CTA (commonly known as the Tibetan Government-in-exile) has three branches, as in a typical democratic government: judiciary, legislature, and executive. There are seven departments under the executive and 12 foreign missions. There are schools, health services, cultural activities, and economic development projects also under the executive branch for the Tibetan communities in India, Nepal, and Bhutan.

The budget session of the 16th Parliament was planned from 17-27 March, which would have been the last budget presentation of incumbent President of CTA Lobsang Sangay. His term ends in May 2021.

One USD = 73.75 Indian rupees