Budget up for debate in mid-May

– Finance minister says process delayed due to logistics

BY DELANA ISLES

Logistics, which they hope to sort out next year, is what is delaying the 2023-2024 budget, Minister of Finance, Honourable Erwin Jay Saunders has stated.

Speaking with the Weekly News on Wednesday, April 12, the Minister and Deputy Premier said he expects the ministerial and departmental work – logistics – to be wrapped up at the end of April, and the process of debate to be conducted around May.

“We’re expecting to bring the budget in the week of May 15, when it will be brought to the House of Assembly and debated, and we’re expecting to get it done by the end of this month before the debate.”

When completed, the budget, also known as the Appropriations Ordinance, will be sent to the appropriations committee for review.

“It’s such a long process and getting everything from everyone, going through, tweaking it, and getting it right, that’s what the delay is,” the minister said.

“It’s always a slow process getting from all the departments, everything that they want, but we’re going to move to a mediumterm development strategy, so we know going into the budget this is the strategy of the government versus for the departments to come and give their individual strategies.”

He said this way they won’t have to wait on individual departments to set their priorities and key performance indicators.

“That is why we are moving to a medium term-development strategy where it’s collectively done, so we all know the strategy going in from year to year.”

Saunders said he intends to have a more efficient process by next year “where we can actually start first of April”.

He said the Fiscal Strategic Policy Statement (FSPS) was sent off in January to the UK and they were happy with it, but that the government is still tweaking the document.

On March 15, Cabinet approved a revised FSPS 2023-27 to include funding for road improvements and electrification across all islands funded from cash reserves and it to be submitted to the UK and onward to the House of Assembly.

The minister also reminded that the TCI is at zero debt and has not run a deficit budget in quite a while, as such UK approval is not necessary.

“We don’t really need the UK to sign off on the budget as much as keeping them in the loop… once we are not breaching any of the sustainability ratios… we don’t need them to sign off.”

The first time the TCI has not needed UK approval of its budget following the reinstatement of the Constitution, was in 2017, when the territory met all the debt sustainability indicators that are set out in the Framework Document

Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance, the Honourable Erwin Jay Saunders agreed between the governments of the United Kingdom and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The government is constitutionally bound to pass the budget by July and appears to be on track to do that much earlier than the constitutional deadline. In the meantime, government business continues to be funded with the $140.3 million provisional warrant that was passed in midMarch, in anticipation of the budget being late.