Skopje, 23 November 2022 (MIA) - Elaborating the 2023 draft budget before the Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee on Wednesday, Finance Minister Fatmir Besimi highlighted that mitigating of the energy crisis impact and rising inflation, continuing fiscal consolidation and strengthening fiscal sustainability, ensuring conditions for economic recovery and sustainable economic growth, as well as uninterrupted financing of the basic functions of the state and support for judicial reforms and Euro-Atlantic integration are the four basic goals of the draft budget. He noted that the government remains firmly committed to a gradual fiscal consolidation, which will not negatively affect economic activity. “This budget is the first to be adopted according to the new law on budget supported by all the MPs,” Besimi underlined. He first referred to the economic context and the budget assumptions, the basic macroeconomic scenario and the risks. He said that economic activity in the Republic of North Macedonia this year was affected by challenges and uncertainties caused by global factors. GDP recorded an annual growth of 2.8% on a real basis in the Q2, which represents a further growth of economic activity, after the increase of 2.4% in the Q1. Economic growth reached 2.6% in Q1 2022. According to Besimi, the inflation rate during the year has an upward trend and in the period January-October 2022 it reached 13.2%, which reflects the price pressures on the supply side caused by global factors which resulted in an upward trend in the prices of primary products on the international market, and were transferred to the domestic economy, mainly through the soaring prices of food products, oil products and electricity. According to the current trends, which are significantly higher than the previous projections, it is expected, as Besimi pointed out, that the inflation rate to reach 12.9% in 2022. Prior to opening debate on today's 52nd session of the Finance and Budget Committee on the 2023 draft budget, Finance Minister Besimi symbolically handed over the budget to the Chair of the Finance and Budget Committee, Bojan Stojanoski, as a sign of the good cooperation so far. Stojanoski remined that the parliamentary debate on draft budget lasts 10 days.