Bud­get Day is ex­pect­ed to be on Oc­to­ber 5.Sources dis­closed the date yes­ter­day and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is ex­pect­ed to of­fi­cial­ly an­nounce it to­day fol­low­ing the first full work­ing ses­sion of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Cab­i­net.

Im­bert told re­porters af­ter he was sworn in as min­is­ter on Fri­day that the bud­get date was ten­ta­tive­ly set for Sep­tem­ber 28 but sources said it would be read one week lat­er on Oc­to­ber 5. The Gov­ern­ment has un­til the end of Oc­to­ber to pass the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill 2016.The new ses­sion of Par­lia­ment is al­so to con­vene two days lat­er than the orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed Sep­tem­ber 21.

The Gov­ern­ment will have a tight sched­ule to com­plete all the stages of de­bate on the fis­cal pack­age, in­clud­ing a one-week de­bate in Par­lia­ment where the op­po­si­tion mem­bers in­tend to re­spond to the pro­posed fis­cal mea­sures.All 41 MPs are ex­pect­ed to con­tribute to the de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and de­bates are ex­pect­ed to run late in­to the night.

Im­bert said last week the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to com­plet­ing all the stages of the bud­get de­bate by the end of Oc­to­ber.The Gov­ern­ment was elect­ed on Sep­tem­ber 7 and min­is­ters have on­ly this week be­gun work­ing from their re­spec­tive of­fices.

The fi­nan­cial year ends on Sep­tem­ber 30 but Im­bert said there was pro­vi­sion in the law for ten per cent of the pre­vi­ous year's bud­get to be spent dur­ing the month of Oc­to­ber if a new bud­get was not passed in time.He said the Gov­ern­ment would have ac­cess to an es­ti­mat­ed $6 bil­lion dur­ing that pe­ri­od.