#BudgetDebate2025: Williams outlines how 2025/26 budget will be funded
The budget for fiscal year 2025/26 will be funded with $949.5 billion of tax revenues; $139.8 billion of non-tax revenues; $812 million of bauxite levy and $5.96 billion of grants.
This was outlined by Finance and Public Service Minister Fayval Williams as she opened the 2025/26 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives Tuesday afternoon.
“In terms of the debt payment, we have $162.7 billion of debt that comes due in FY2025/26; we forecast loan receipts of $158.4 billion and we expect to pay $4.3 billion from our own resources,” Williams said.
She noted that the Government was projecting a small surplus for the upcoming fiscal year 2025/26. She stated that while it is small, “it sure beats the negative, negative, negative…; 10 years of negative fiscal balance out of 12 years between 1992/93 to 2003/04 which plunged Jamaica into the abyss!”
“Take a look at the debt/GDP figures, practically every year that the [People’s National Party] Government of 1992 to 2004 ran a budget deficit the debt/GDP went higher. They mortgaged the future of the Jamaican people!” Williams remarked.
“At 68.7 per cent debt/GDP at the end of this FY2024/25, we have just about emerged into the light from the deep sink-hole in which the run-wid-it government plunged Jamaica,” she added.
