Gov’t starts outlining reductions in budget
BY ALICIA DUNKLEY Observer staff reporter dunkleya@jamaicaobserver.com
Wednesday, April 15, 2009

The Government yesterday gave the first detailed outline of the deep cuts it intends to make to this year’s budget.

The administration told the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament that the Real Estate Board and the Firearms Licensing Authority are among several State entities that have been put on a one-year notice pending their removal from the public purse, and that the PIOJ and STATIN will have to function with fewer funds than last year.

Last week, in outlining its programme for the year, the administration indicated that a number of regulatory agencies and others engaged in commercial activities were to be made self-financing and taken off the national budget, as the Government tries to rein in expenditure to combat the global financial meltdown.

Speaking in Parliament during the first meeting of the Standing Finance Committee at Gordon House in Kingston yesterday to discuss the 2009/10 Estimates of Expenditure, Prime Minister Bruce Golding said the directive has been given to a number of agencies.

“I instructed them [Real Estate Board] recently that they have to become self-sustaining and I have told them that as of next year they are off the budget, so this year is a transitional one,” he said.
“It is a directive that has been given to a number of agencies. I do not think that taxpayers ought to cough up money for us to regulate the granting of firearms licenses; a number of these agencies have been told this year is your last year on the budget, we have to get them off,” the prime minister said.

Finance Minister Audley Shaw said a list is now being compiled by his ministry, based on the prime minister’s instructions.

“It will not be completed before the budget debate, but where there is an indication that changes could take place during the course of the fiscal year, then savings or otherwise will be reflected in the final budget. The review is very comprehensive,” Shaw said.

In the meantime, the Government said cuts to the budget of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) from $133.5 million last year to $90 million this year and to the Statistical Institute (STATIN), from $626 million to $565 million, would not impair both agencies. Golding, however, said $20 million is to be restored to STATIN to enable it to do preliminary work towards its collection of a national census.

Golding said the additional funds would be found from elsewhere in the budget without affecting the bottom line.

Amidst the belt-tightening and cost cuts, the Office of the Public Defender is to be given an additional $10 million to secure legal personnel and to assist it in clearing off its arrears.

The Government has also made drastic cuts in the allocations for state functions, the outlay for the upkeep of the prime minister’s official residence at Vale Royal in Kingston and State visits.

“We are budgeting for less and we are budgeting for more economically staged events,” Golding said in response to questions from Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller about the reduction from $50 million last year to $22 million this year in the allocation for the annual National Honours and Awards Ceremony held in October.

“We are going to put on a good function this year, but it is not going to cost us what it normally does,” Golding said. In the meantime, the prime minister said he has given instructions to ‘limit everything’ where expenditure at Vale Royal was concerned.

And while conceding that the country’s postal services will continue to require some level of budgetary support and cannot be weaned, Golding yesterday said a policy aimed at reducing post offices and postal agencies, which now number 700, is being developed for presentation to Cabinet.

“We must transform them from simply being a point where you drop off and collect letters to a point of major information and commercial activity,” he said. The Post and Telecoms Department has been allocated $1.4 billion this year. It is projected to earn $1,006.6 million in revenue by year end.