There has been a boom in tax collections, which has seen the national purse getting more revenues than budgeted based on the latest national revenue out-turn.

The latest figures show that the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) continues to collect more than targeted from taxpayers while at the same time spending has been well short of budget, owing to what the Opposition People’s National Party claim is the Andrew Holness administration not paying its bills to suppliers.

The revenues out-turn shows that for the period of April to July 2021, total revenues and grants amounted to $225.53 billion, which is $17.26 billion more than projected. This jump in revenues represent an increase of approximately 39 per cent relative to the $161.75 billion recorded for the corresponding period in 2020.

Data from the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service show that all three categories of government revenue; tax revenue, capital revenue and grants out-performed projections during the review period. Tax revenue was the best performer going ahead of budget by $17.11 billion to end the April to July period at $176.67 billion.

Capital revenue amounted to $778.20 million during the review period when none was budgeted while grants were $1.71 billion more than budgeted to close the period at $3.08 billion. However, non-tax revenue was down $2.33 billion to post $45.01 billion. Notably, no budgeted amount was booked for Bauxite Levy likewise for the same period last year.

On the expenditure side, there was a $7.33 billion shortfall as the Government spent less than the budgeted amount of $237.17 billion for the period April to July 2021. In fact, the Government only spent $229.84 billion during the period. Recurrent expenditure which totalled $209.05 billion, accounted for 90.95 per cent of overall expenditures. Of the recurrent expenditure categories for the review period, the categories above the budgeted amount were ‘Employee Contribution’ and ‘Interest’. ‘Employee Contribution’ amounted to $7.42 billion, which was $538.10 million or 7.8 per cent more than budgeted. Interest totalled $42.52 billion, 4.4 per cent above the budgeted amount of $40.72 billion.

Conversely ‘Compensation of Employees’ totalled $78.44 billion, $946.50 million below the budgeted amount of $79.39 billion. ‘Programmes’ totalled $88.08 billion, 6.5 per cent less than budgeted. Additionally, ‘Wages & Salaries’ totalled $71.02 billion, 2.0 per cent less than the budgeted amount of $72.50 billion, meaning the public sector wage bill had a savings of almost $1.5 billion.

The ‘Fiscal Deficit’, which is the shortfall in a government’s income compared with its spending was $4.31 billion, relative to a ‘Projected Deficit’ of $28.90 billion. The ‘Primary Surplus Balance’, which is the excess of government revenues over non-interest spending, amounted to $38.21 billion, relative to the ‘Budgeted Primary Surplus Balance’ of $11.82 billion.