2019/20 Budget Communication Final Budget Communication | Page 7

there is NO increase in Value Added Tax.
Our central approach to revenue is about making the Government more efficient and
productive in the administration and collection of existing taxes and increasing compliance by
making the tax system more transparent and fair.
Accordingly, what you will see in the new budget, Mr. Speaker, is an approach to
expenditure that is about being purposeful, strategic, and intentional about planning for what is
necessary and needed. This includes activities to:
Ø eliminate spending on unnecessary line items;
Ø increase Government efficiency and productivity; and
Ø focus spending in a more targeted and strategic way.
Mr. Speaker,
You would be interested to know what we found after doing a ministry-by-ministry,
line-item-by-line-item analysis of actual government expenditure compared to budgeted sums. We
found a historical pattern of over-budgeting.
In the category of personal emoluments, for example, we found that the budget
included allocations for salaries that were no longer being paid. How is this possible? You have
situations where the employment register is outdated and does not reflect some of the employees
who retire, leave the Public Service and move into pensioner status. Although these individuals are
not being paid, their salaries are still being budgeted for. It is noteworthy to mention that personal
emoluments constitute roughly 30 percent of the country’s total expenditure! Therefore, over-
budgeting in just this area alone can reduce available spending in other key areas of the economy.
As a result, you will see a reduction in the budgeted amount for salaries, along with
line items in every single Ministry. This budget cut does not mean a cut in the actual headcount,
or in actual programmes. It simply means we are budgeting properly to account for the actual
commitments of the Government.
Time after time, in area after area, we have found cases where agencies did not spend
all of their allocations. In fact, when the assessments were conducted, on average, most agencies
spent roughly 60 to 70 percent of their budgets. As a result of our in-depth review, we identified
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