2021 deficit expected to be CI$10 million
(CNS): The government is now expecting its spending gap for 2021 to be around CI$5 million less than it had predicted during the recent budget presentations. The public sector year-end figures are expected to be released shortly, but in the meantime, Finance Minister Chris Saunders has revealed that the deficit is more likely to be around CI$10 million, despite the increase in government spending last year as a result of the pandemic and Tropical Storm Grace.
Announcing the preliminary figures at the press briefing on Thursday, Saunders said it was “pretty good”, given that the previous pre-election forecast for 2021 had been a deficit in the region of CI$90 million.
Saunders also revealed that 2022 had also got off to a good start, as the preliminary figures for January this year show a surplus of CI$169 million. However, the government collects a significant amount of its operating revenue in January each year, especially from the financial sector. Saunders said the government had taken in some CI$238 million in the first month of the year.
Nevertheless, according to the current budget, the government has forecast a deficit around $15.8 million for the Entire Public Sector for 2022. But while forecasting what the government expects to spend and earn is not an exact science, the track record for government predictions has not been solid.
The Office of the Auditor General has raised concerns in the past about the consistent inaccuracies in budget predictions, which undermines its ability to properly plan public spending throughout the year.
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Category: Government Finance, Politics
Better pay attention of what is happening in the east.
free money making solutions:
allow sunday trading
bring in weed tourism(to protect the fine caymanian christian ‘heritage’, only tourists and expats are allowed purchase)
bring in casinos at top hotels (to protect the fine caymanian christian ‘heritage’. only tourists and expats are allowed)
treble all traffic fines
treble duty on cigarettes
implement any recommendation of miiler-shaw or e&y reports.
sell loss making cayman airways
sell loss making turtle farm
sell goab
double stamp duty for non-resident property purchasers
Reduce the $1.5 million a day government payroll and bring in professionals to manage the budgets.
Like every other financial center, the Cayman Islands has a number of entities, and physical offices, with varying amounts Russian exposure that CIMA should rapidly be getting a handle on. The UK is now rushing to advance its “Economic Crime Act” which may actually bring about the public UBO register that was deflected circa 2016. We should expect knock-on effects here, especially to CIG 22 revenue projections as there will likely be a proportion of Cayman domiciled entities impacted by this – either not paying their bills, frozen, or confiscated outright. The pace that this may come at Cayman will be difficult to underestimate.
What about the dump?
its still there bobo….pact doing a fine ppm impression by kicking the can down the road on this issue.
Is the half a billion of borrowing making this look better than it actually is? Scary times for our future with Saunders making decisions.
Saunders making decisions to benefit his fellow countrymen , who will return the favor by voting for him, Seymour, Mac and Kenny .
Bring in the voodoo accounting and watch it become a surplus right before your eyes.
Voodoo accounting, post-approved magic concession funds, reckless and illegal overseas office spending is what got us into this mess in the first place. We don’t need anymore of that. Voters thankfully threw out that trash last April.
Voters threw out? All PPM other than Austin were re-elected.
Mac went to the UDP dark side again and took JuJu and Seymour .
Now you have a mostly uneducated unemployable self serving bunch whose main ambitions are to buy wotes however they can, with borrowed money.
What about the $350 million “just in case” PPM borrowing facility that PACT has decided to spend plus the $400 million “bullet bond” that my grandchildren will be expected to repay? These guys are a runaway train and they are just getting started. We will soon have a similar debt burden as our neighbours. Almost a billion dollars…plenty skim to go around.
Unsustainable economic footing as the USD lurches towards recession.
Depression
I never know what to believe about these kind of figures that come from the government; they clearly measure “surplus” much, much differently than I do for my own finances.
We gave away millions to R3 and other charities in December when we knew we were going to have a deficit? Come on PACT?
A should have stood of accounts!!
any comment on the current unsustainable levels of inflation….???? or is just more of the same and bury your head in the sand???……total clowns.
There is no surplus once the bills are paid. Can we stop with the nonsense already
a deficit going into a huge international recession?? and zero plans for reducing spending??….. bonkers stuff….not even dart will be able to save cayman this time.
Are we really going into recession? If so, why is there inflation? Also, if both recession and inflation are existing at the same time, should government just do nothing so that they cancel out each other?
@4:11 recession + inflation = stagflation, a very bad situation if it materializes.
Supply-side inflationary pressures, from the Great COVID Interruption, get worse as we head into a long war. The baton gets passed from one macro problem to another.
Ask CIMA who is responsible for Cayman’s monetary policy.
Ummm, the American Federal Reserve? Our dollar is pegged to theirs.
Halve the civil service, stop importing poverty, and align government remuneration and benefits with the private sector. Automate. Require accountability and reward productivity. Do that or we are doomed.
Great plan. Apparently we already have a problem employing Caymanians. Seems like a great strategy to put a couple thousand more out of work.
Nonsense. There are literally thousands of jobs in the private sector, currently held by expatriates, that any competent civil servant could fill.
thats laughable and pure wonderland stuff.
Which is fine. But if you half the civil service d you think it will be the competent ones that get the push? But all speculation since no Caymanian politician in his right mind is ever going to fire 3000 voters when the margin in any constituency – with the possible exception of Kenny Bryan – can be measured at less than a couple of hundred votes.
We import hundreds of impoverished people from around the region and magically make them Caymanian. If we curtailed that issue we would be able to pay all Caymanians, particularly those without employment, a minimum basic wage if we needed to. We would also be able to have a sovereign wealth fund, paying dividends for generations.
El Salvador GDP up over 10% thanks to Bitcoin.
Will be a financial centre for the world, as Cayman downvotes and moans about the dump and expats. Much microwaves
And here’s why Cayman is collapsing economically and socially.
You don’t just hire people because of their place of birth. The poster said productivity, you can’t just hire every local and expect the economy to function. Did you finish school or ever read a history book? Read these:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
+
When Money Dies
When you’ve finished, pass them to the other morons who you voted into office. As they don’t have a clue either
And yet when a Canadian gets a job in Canada in preference to a Caymanian applicant, even though the Caymanian may be better qualified, that is OK? The street runs both ways. There is no problem with any country preferring its nationals over others. None.
As long as they don’t expect the same results or claim they are running a world class civil service – you can’t simultaneously differentiate non the basis of origin and on talent.
Our civil service appears to prefer Jamaican nationals over Caymanian nationals. Just sayin.
Half the deficit can be attributed to the wall posters and artistic renditions in Dubai.
Take out the $15 million for Submarine Cable that you know absolutely nothing about and you now have $5 million in profit. voilà!
Or you could hire more staff for OfReg who also know nothing about Submarine Cables (or telecoms in general) but are willing to go on overseas courses and conferences to ‘learn’, and take the losses back up to $25 million. Of course, once you ‘invest’ in a loss-making entity these become recurring losses.