The cen­tral gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal ac­counts record­ed a sur­plus of $88 mil­lion in the first nine months of the cur­rent 2023 fis­cal year, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank’s Ju­ly 2023 Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin.

In the Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin, which was pub­lished yes­ter­day, the Cen­tral Bank said the fis­cal sur­plus for the same pe­ri­od in 2022, from Oc­to­ber 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022 was $3 bil­lion.

The Cen­tral Bank not­ed that for the first nine months of the 2023 fis­cal year, T&T ex­pe­ri­enced im­prove­ments in en­er­gy rev­enues, but the low­er year-on-year fis­cal out­turn re­sult­ed from high­er ex­pen­di­ture cou­pled with a mar­gin­al fall-off in non-en­er­gy re­ceipts.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ju­ly Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin, cen­tral gov­ern­ment rev­enue ex­pand­ed by 5.9 per cent (year-on-year) to $40.5 bil­lion, due pri­mar­i­ly to an im­prove­ment in en­er­gy rev­enue.

“Dur­ing the ref­er­ence pe­ri­od, en­er­gy rev­enue in­creased by $2.4 bil­lion to $21.0 bil­lion. Cor­po­ra­tion tax­es from en­er­gy com­pa­nies (which in­clude sup­ple­men­tal pe­tro­le­um tax and pe­tro­le­um prof­its tax), rep­re­sent­ing 76.7 per cent to­tal en­er­gy sec­tor rev­enue, were re­spon­si­ble for a $1.5 bil­lion boost to gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue,” ac­cord­ing to the re­port.

“On the oth­er hand, rev­enues from the non-en­er­gy sec­tor de­clined by $139.4 mil­lion (year-on-year) to $19.5 bil­lion. The fall-off in non-en­er­gy rev­enue was led by a $695.9 mil­lion re­duc­tion in tax­es from goods and ser­vices, of which Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) re­ceipts is the largest com­po­nent,” the re­port said.

The Cen­tral Bank point­ed out that de­spite $7.4 bil­lion in gross VAT re­ceipts over the pe­ri­od, ac­cel­er­at­ed pay­ments of VAT re­funds ($2.9 bil­lion) re­sult­ed in net VAT rev­enues of $4.5 bil­lion.

Spend­ing

On the is­sue of ex­pen­di­ture, the Cen­tral Bank not­ed that cen­tral gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture grew by $5.2 bil­lion (year-on-year) to $40.4 bil­lion.

There were in­creas­es across all sub-cat­e­gories of re­cur­rent spend­ing, but “the growth in ex­pen­di­ture was pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by an ad­di­tion­al $3.6 bil­lion in trans­fers and sub­si­dies, part­ly ow­ing to an in­crease of $890.5 mil­lion in trans­fers to house­holds.”

The in­crease in trans­fers to house­holds was main­ly due to the pe­tro­le­um sub­sidy that amount­ed to $1 bil­lion be­tween Oc­to­ber 1 2022 and June 30, 2023.

Cap­i­tal spend­ing in­creased to $2.3 bil­lion, com­pared to $1.7 bil­lion record­ed in the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od of the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year.

A sup­ple­men­tal ap­pro­pri­a­tion of an ad­di­tion­al $3.9 bil­lion in spend­ing for the 2023 Bud­get was ap­proved by Par­lia­ment in May 2023.

Of the $3.9 bil­lion ap­proved, $3.4 bil­lion is ear­marked for trans­fers and sub­si­dies (which in­cludes $1.6 bil­lion for the pe­tro­le­um sub­sidy) while an ad­di­tion­al $362.7 mil­lion is to be spent on the cap­i­tal pro­gramme.

To­tal ex­pen­di­ture is ex­pect­ed to in­crease to $62.1 bil­lion.

Debt

Gen­er­al gov­ern­ment debt grew by $925.6 mil­lion to $140.3 bil­lion in the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023, ac­cord­ing to the Ju­ly 2023 Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin.

Ad­just­ed gen­er­al gov­ern­ment debt out­stand­ing (which ex­cludes debt is­sued for ster­il­i­sa­tion pur­pos­es) al­so in­creased to $134.6 bil­lion (68.2 per cent of GDP) at the end of June 2023 from $129.7 bil­lion (66.5 per cent of GDP) record­ed at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Cen­tral gov­ern­ment do­mes­tic debt (ex­clud­ing ster­ilised debt) reached $70.0 bil­lion (35.5 per cent of GDP) at the end of June 2023 from $66.2 bil­lion (33.9 per cent of GDP) at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Ex­ter­nal debt in­creased to $32.2 bil­lion (16.3 per cent of GDP) in June 2023, $100.0 mil­lion high­er than at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2022. In the first nine months of the 2023 fis­cal year, a to­tal of US$122.8 mil­lion was dis­bursed, in­clud­ing US$60.0 mil­lion from the Cor­po­ración An­d­i­na de Fo­men­to (CAF) to sup­port the Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and Dig­i­tal In­clu­sion Strat­e­gy.

Oth­er dis­burse­ments in­clud­ed US$27.2 mil­lion from the In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) for var­i­ous in­fra­struc­ture projects, US$20.5 mil­lion from the Uni­cred­it Bank of Aus­tria for the con­struc­tion of the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, while US$12.0 mil­lion was drawn down from the In­ter­na­tion­al Bank for Re­con­struc­tion and De­vel­op­ment (IBRD), a lend­ing arm of the World Bank Group, for the COVID-19 Emer­gency Re­sponse.