The parliamentary Committee on Transport and Communications today accepted the proposal for re-balancing the budget for Macedonian Radio Television, and as a result, the public broadcaster will receive nearly three million euros on its account for this year.
In 2018, MRT was originally meant to receive 700 million denars, and with the budget re-balancing, this amount will increase by 186 million and 550 thousand denars, i.e. the total budget of MRT will now be 886 million and 550 thousand denars.
Dime Velkovski from SDSM said that the changes to the budget are legitimate and MRT has a bigger budget than the Ministry of Information Society and Administration and urged for the adoption of the Law on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services to happen as soon as possible, with which the Government offers a solution for financing MRT. Seventy amendments have been submitted to this law, and the Committee has reviewed only a few. Continuation of the session has not been scheduled for any time soon.
Meanwhile, even though opposition MPs supported the proposal, they warned that MRT could face financial problems if the broadcasting fee was to be abolished.
MRT’s budget re-balancing is supposed to be be voted on in a plenary session.
