HAVING fallen short of its original revenue target for October by $2 billion, the Government is now trailing behind its new revenue target by $6.4 billion.

But that is only if between November and next March it can earn what it projected it would at the beginning of the fiscal year.

There was no month in which government earned what it projected it would this fiscal year, excepting in April when it beat projections by $298 million.

What’s more, the Government collected $17.8 billion less than it projected it would for the period April to October.

In September, Finance Minister Audley Shaw performed a major juggling act in his supplementary budget, slashing $12.7 billion from recurrent expenditure and another $6 billion from capital spending to meet some of the $25 billion more needed to pay additional debt expenses and salary increases, among other things.

The upshot being an increase in the fiscal deficit target from $78.3 billion to $94.5 billion.

The expectation then was that total revenues would fall below original projections by $14.3 billion to $315 billion for the fiscal year, leaving a shortfall of $1.7 billion, which would be made up for by increasing departure tax and GCT applied to telephones.

Based on original projections, the Government expects to earn $152 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year — November to March. But even if they hit the target they will still be $6.4 billion short.

The net effect of the adjustments made to the budget in September also meant that the Government faced a $6.5-billion increase in expenditure, according to projections.

However, for the fiscal year to November, expenditure, excluding amortisation, was already $7.2 billion more that originally projected.

Interest payments were adjusted upwards by $16.2 billion over original projections and tracked $4 billion higher than originally budgeted for the seven months to October 31, 2009.

Capital expenditures, which were slashed by $6 billion for the full fiscal year, was only $1.8 billion lower than projected, implying that the government still have another $4 billion to cut going forward, which can accommodate some of the variation in interest payments not yet recognised — about $12 billion.

Even then Government has little room to keep other expenses down to make up for the short- fall in revenue, unless it were able to stop retroactive payments to teachers and nurses that led to some of the increase in the budget for the current fiscal year.

The Ministry of Education saw a net increase of $3.9 billion to its budget, primarily due to upward adjustments to be made for retroactive salary payments to be made to teachers across primary, all-age and secondary schools — $3.7 billion has been allocated for that purpose.

At the same time, a provision of $430 million was made to “meet the 15 per cent increase in salaries to nurses”, also a retroactive payment.