March 01,2018

For the period of April 2017 to January 2018, the GOJ reported Total Revenues & Grants of $434.88 billion, $15.66 billion more than the government’s projection. Furthermore, year over year, this represents an increase of approximately 11% relative to the $391.84 billion recorded for the corresponding period in 2017. ‘Tax Revenue’, ‘Non-Tax Revenue’ and ‘Capital Revenue’ all outperformed projections while ‘Bauxite Levy’ and ‘Grants’ underperformed projections during the review period. ‘Tax Revenues’ amounted to $391.45 billion, $10.61 billion more than budgeted, ‘Non-Tax Revenue’ of $37.48 billion was reported; $4.14 billion more than budgeted. In addition, ‘Capital Revenues’ also outperformed projections by 114.7% or $1.17 billion to total $2.19 billion relative to the budgeted figure of $1.02 billion. On the other hand, ‘Bauxite Levy’ totalled $127.50 million, $3.50 million or 2.7% less than budgeted.  Also, ‘Grants’ closed at $3.63 billion, 254.60 million or 6.5% below the budgeted figure of $3.89 billion.

Expenditures

Total Expenditure for the period April to January 2018 amounted to $438.51 billion, $10.58 billion or 2.4% less than the budgeted $449.09 billion. Recurrent expenditure which totalled $404.67 billion, accounted for 92.28% of overall expenditures. Relative to projections, recurrent expenditure was $9.85 billion (2.4%) less than budgeted. Of the recurrent expenditure categories over the review period, all categories with the exception of ‘Employee Contribution’ came in below budget. ‘Programmes’ which amounted to $137.03 billion was $2.22 billion or 1.6% less than projected, ‘Compensation of Employees’ which amounted to $155.73 billion was $4.25 billion or 2.7%  less than projected and ‘Wages & Salaries’ amounted to $143.61 billion and was $5.39 billion or 3.6% less than projected. ‘Employee Contribution’ which amounted to $12.12 billion for the period was over budget by 10.4% relative to the budgeted $10.98 billion.

As a result of the decreases in expenditures for the period April to January 2018, the ‘Fiscal Deficit’ was $3.62 billion, relative to a projected deficit of $29.86 billion. Additionally, the primary balance for the period amounted to $108.28 billion, 26.8% more than budgeted.

As part of the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP), the GOJ estimates that the primary balance, as a performance criterion, should amount to $132 billion by the end of the 2017/2018 fiscal year. As at the end of January 2018, this amounted to $108.28 billion.  Tax Revenue was expected to total an estimated $473 billion by the end of the March quarter. The reported tax revenue for the end of January 2018 was $391.45 billion.

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