KINGSTON, Jamaica – Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), Mikael Phillips, on Tuesday urged the government to ensure that recently reshuffled government bodies are adequately financed in the new financial year.

The Opposition MP said his committee felt that bodies, like the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel (OPC), which signs off on Bills to be tabled in Parliament, are not fully funded, and has been consistently understaffed in the past. But, now that it has become part of the new Ministry of Legal and Constitutional Affairs, it should be funded enough to recruit staff to meet the needs of Parliament.

“The view was expressed by the committee that these agencies and departments which are now transferred to the Ministry, are made more effective to ensure adequate funding for the things that we complain about when they were at the Ministry of Justice, and to ensure that the new ministry is not like the situation it was in at the Ministry of Justice,” Phillips said.

He said that the members wanted to see, in the new financial year, these ministries, departments and agencies receive adequate funding, “so that we can see the benefits of having a new ministry”.

Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr Nigel Clarke, who piloted the budget, explained that because the reorganisation of the Cabinet came so close to the tabling of the second supplementary estimates, in fact on the day of the tabling of the estimates, the government had to choose between delaying it to fund the new ministries, or tabling a third budget as it has done.

“We couldn’t have delayed because, as I explained, when I opened the debate on the second supplementary estimates certain ministries were in need of the funding, which is the precise reason why we had the circumstances where we had standing finance committee the day after and we all came back on the Thursday for the second supplementary estimates to be passed,” Dr Clarke said.

He said that between the time when the second supplementary estimates were tabled and today, the need had arisen to make certain additional amendments, which he proposed in the Standing Finance Committee meeting Tuesday involving two separate activities.

 The first activity was the redirection of about $2 billion, which had been shifted from a number of heads to the Police Department as follows: In the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service shifting about $357 million, of which $309 million was for the procurement of equipment for the census to take place in 2022/23, which has been slower than programmed; and $48 million for the slow pace of the utilisation of funds provided to support the ministries, departments and agencies.

He said that there was also an amount of $981 million from the Ministry of National Security relating to an higher than anticipated attrition rate for the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), lower than anticipated recruitment of professional entry officers, and a deliberate effort by the JDF to reduce the number of members of the National Reserves who are called out on a regular basis.

There was also a movement of $500 million from the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology (MSET), a sum that would not be utilised by the Universal Service Fund (USF) in this fiscal year, due to slower than programmed implementation of previous initiatives.

In addition, $105 million was pulled from the Accountant General’s Department (AGD), from savings resulting from the slower than re-programming of the new office.

He said that, on the capital side, the government had used the opportunity to ensure that the full capital budget was spent, by tidying up some areas where there was under-spending, and put it into areas where it is more likely to be spent.

He said that while some projects were unable to use up their allocation for fiscal year 2021/22, the South Coast Highway Project had demonstrated the capacity to absorb the additional funds before the end of the fiscal year.

“One thing we have done over the last few years is to attempt to so manage the capital budget, that the amount budgeted for that budget is actually spent,” said Clarke.

He noted that this had been a shortcoming over a long period of time, but that the current administration has achieved up to 95 per cent or higher capital budget execution, and this kind of capital spending is geared towards that.

The House of Representatives passed the estimates with the support of the Opposition.

-Balford Henry