ST GEORGE’S, Grenada (CMC) — The Grenada government says it will be seeking to borrow more than EC$700 million (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) to finance the 2025 national budget that will be presented to Parliament on March 7.

“We will present to the Parliament an opportunity to have us borrow extra money for all our development projects that will be coming up. I will wait until that number is finalised before I announce it to the nation…I know what ballpark figure we are looking for, it is over EC$725 million,” Finance Minister Dennis Cornwall told a news conference.

Grenada’s fiscal year runs from January 1 to December 31, and Cornwall, who will be presenting the fiscal package 10 weeks into the financial year, told reporters that the government will be increasing its borrowing on the St Kitts-based Eastern Caribbean Securities Exchange (ECSE) by auctioning more Treasury Bills.

For the two-year period, 2023-2024, Grenada raised more than EC200 million on the ECSE with the funds being used to refinance its existing treasury bills and treasury notes currently on the market.

“To finance our 2025 budget, we may need to basically increase our borrowing from the Eastern Caribbean Stock Exchange, we are fine-tuning that number to find out what exactly that will be for the portion of debt that we will try and raise from the Eastern Caribbean Stock Exchange in terms of new borrowings and new treasury bills that will be issued and as such I will not be able to tell you exactly how much that will be as yet,” Cornwall said.

Following the passage of Hurricane Beryl on July 1 last year, Cabinet decided to suspend the fiscal rules of the Fiscal Resilience Act.

Cornwall said that the suspension may continue until 2026 because the Dickon Mitchell government will not be reinstating it while it’s in the recovery phase following the passage of the hurricane which devastated the northern part of the island.

“We continue to build Grenada after the incident of Hurricane Beryl and currently we are in the reconstruction phase of this activity,” Cornwall told reporters.

“In 2025, all our efforts will be concentrated on rebuilding Grenada and so we will not reinstate the fiscal rule until we are at the end of the rebuilding process. So it can take you the whole of 2025 and parts of 2026,” Cornwall added.

Last year, Parliament approved a national budget of EC$1,548.1 million.