EU grants will allow Ramallah to pay June salaries to civil servants

27 July 2020, 3:35 pm

Edit

The Palestinian Authority will be able to pay the June salaries of more than 43,000 civil servants thanks to a €23 million ($27.03 million) grant provided by the European Union.

PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announces that the PA is continuing to reject tax revenues which Israel collects on its behalf, in protest of Israel’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank. Refusing the revenue, which makes up around 70% of the PA’s 2020 budget, left the PA in a deep fiscal crisis.

The PA had previously announced that it would only be able to pay 50% of the promised salaries to its employees, whose wages constitute around 20% of Palestinian GDP.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh speaks during a press conference at the Foreign Press Association in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on June 9, 2020. (Abbas Momani/Pool Photo via AP)

“Our contribution today will help maintain the delivery of key public services to the Palestinian people amid this extraordinary crisis,” EU Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff says in a statement.

— Aaron Boxerman