We also asked Minister Fonseca about the 25% ministry budget cuts-or, as he calls it, a reallocation of funds. As you heard the PM say, the government is attempting to reapportion $50 million to be used on cost-of-living relief measures, along with cutting their own allowances in half.
We asked Fonseca how they will balance those cuts with the important operational work of both his ministries:
Francis Fonseca, MFAT/MOECST
"Again, I make the point that it's reallocation. So I think using the word budget cuts is a misnomer. It's a reallocation. We're finding 30 to $50 million that will be used for these cost-of-living programs. So it's a reallocation of those funds. Every ministry is looking at their Capital Two budget projects. Maybe this particular project doesn't have to be done in this fiscal year. So we can defer it to the next fiscal year. So we're doing things like that. We're also looking at recurrent expenditure. You know, maybe you don't need to buy these computers and all these supplies that we need that we usually buy at the end of the fiscal year-maybe we don't need all of them. So we're looking at those things. But the bottom line is, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, in terms of education, for example, which is a massive ministry, that is not one of the ministries that they're making cuts. We're making sure that we keep our commitments under the Ministry of Education."
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