on Wednesday reported that a large part of resources from the Public Treasury's Contingency Reserve set for 2022 was used to purchase vaccines against the novel coronavirus.
"In the opening budget, the Contingency Reserve contained around S/1.655 billion (about US$432 million), and a large part of that amount was used for the payment of vaccine acquisition," he indicated.
The Cabinet member participated in an extraordinary session of Congress' Budget Commission.
At the event, he supported the financial part of the bill that approves a supplementary credit for the financing of the acquisition of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, which was presented by the Executive Branch to Parliament.
"We are talking about a supplementary credit of S/1.185 billion (about US$309 million) which has as its raison d'être proposing it with a legislative initiative because, with a supplementary credit, we are modifying the income and expenses of what the General Budget of the Republic is, which obviously is approved by law; therefore, its modification must have a similar characteristic," Burneo explained.
"It is a different thing when we talk about the use of the Contingency Reserve because that is already a type of fund that precisely serves to attend to urgent matters not considered in the original budget," he added.
"So, it absolutely fits with the coordination that we have previously carried out with the
Ministry of Health and, therefore, we are not likely to have any problem in finally having this supplementary credit approved," he expressed.