On Monday, the Palestinian government announced that Israel's deductions from tax funds raise the ceiling of the deficit in the general budget for the current year to more than $610 million.

The government said in a statement that its cabinet approved in its weekly session in the city of Ramallah the appendix to the budget for the year 2023, and recommended the nomination of President Mahmoud Abbas to attach it to the budget law, which was approved with the main elements of revenues and expenditures in a previous session.

The statement indicated that this year's budget was approved as a cash emergency budget, from which cash flows are available to the treasury.

The statement stated that the budget suffers from a deficit of no less than 360 million dollars, without the unfair Israeli deductions to which the public treasury is exposed, which raises the ceiling of the deficit to more than 610 million dollars.

The statement praised the effort made to prepare the budget in light of the financial and political challenges that "exacerbate the suffering of the Palestinian people."

In March of last year, the Palestinian government approved the 2022 budget at a value of $4.77 billion, with a deficit of $558 million, a decrease of about 25.4 percent from 2021.

The fiscal year in the Palestinian territories begins at the beginning of January of each year, until the end of December of the same year, according to the Palestinian Budget Law.

And Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh announced earlier today that due to the increase in Israeli deductions, which amounted to about 250 million shekels per month (the US dollar equals 3.6 shekels), and the decline in international aid allocated to the budget, the government was forced to borrow from banks to pay the salary for the month of March within days and pay The salary for the current month of April before the Eid Al-Fitr holiday, so that employees can meet their financial obligations during the Eid holiday.

Shtayyeh did not refer to the value of the amount that was borrowed by banks or the value of salary disbursement, which during the past months was 80 percent.