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What Areas Will Budget Cuts Affect?
posted (March 8, 2017)

But when the new budget is presented  on Monday, it might be called “Sharing the Pain.â€￾  That’s because there will be significant increased revenue from taxes, and there will be budget cuts.  The PM didn't say what would get cut, but he did mention it in passing today:…

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Minister of Finance
“On the revenue side, we are committed to finding something like $70 million dollars more in revenue and on the expenditure side we are committed to slashing expenditure by $30 million dollars. I will tell you this, we had a cabinet session yesterday and although ministers were presented with the stark evidence of what those cuts mean for their individual ministry, not one of Minister protested.â€￾ 

Jules Vasquez
“We know that education is the largest single part of the budget, how much of that slashing will affect the Ministry of Education?â€￾ 

Hon. Patrick Faber- Minister of Education
“Correction, the largest part of the budget is the Ministry of Finance which pays the super bond payment. But you’re right, the Ministry of Education, I believe, gets in excess of 27% of the national budget and so it is a large chunk. But as you heard the experts say this morning, much of that goes into the salaries and you will see the increases that were promised coming up in this year’s budget. But the programs of the Ministry of Education, as far as I was able to see, will continue; the payment for the for the CSEC examination or school feeding programs, the apprenticeship program, those initiatives, in fact you will see increases in the areas of youth work and sports. So these measures that have to be taken will not affect the poor and the kind of measures that our government have been engaged in to really help people pull themselves up. And the Ministry of Education, I think, is a good place to look at to see that that is going to be the case.â€￾ 

Of course, we’ll have the full report on the fiscal measures in the new budget  on Monday’s news.

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