Who Gets What in 2020

Introduction

Under normal circumstances, the caption of this section would be by and large accurate. In this extra-ordinary year, with the Budget being essentially a four months projection on eight months of actual spending, the caption has to be considered misleading.

Properly executed, the Policies and Targets are reflected in the allocation of available funds via the various Ministries and other Budget Agencies. Most times execution is done directly, but at other times, via subventions and contributions to other entities. Expenditure in the National Budget is incurred under a number of categories. These are statutory payments which are direct charges on the Consolidated Fund, including allocations for constitutional bodies and offices and public debt payments of interest and principal; Ministries; Departments and Regions; and Statutory bodies.

Expenditure is further divided between Current Revenue and Current Expenditure, Interest, Capital Revenue and Grants, Capital Expenditure and Debt Repayment. In this section, we look at the allocations to the principal Budget Agencies largely by examining the details contained in Volume 1 of the National Estimates.

In this section, Focus looks at the current and capital expenditure by the type of agency. The chart above shows the allocations with “Others”, representing Commissions, the judiciary and the Defence Force.

Central Government’s non-interest current expenditure (employment costs, statutory expenditure and other charges) for the year is budgeted at $240 billion which is 15.6% more than the revised 2019. The Ministries/ Departments with the most significant allocations and the largest changes between 2019 and 2020 are: