By Vernon Daley, Staff ReporterTHE GOVERNMENT has jacked up the 2001/2002 Budget by a further $34.3 billion, most of which will go towards expenses for FINSAC, the Government's financial bail-out company.
The First Supplementary Esti-mates for 2001/2002, which were tabled in the House of Representa-tives yesterday by Finance and Planning Minister Dr. Omar Davies, show the $185.4 billion Budget announced last April being pushed up to $219.7 billion.
About $7.3 billion is for recurrent expenses while $26.9 billion has been allocated towards capital spending.
Roughly $19.5 billion, more than half the additional expenditure, goes to FINSAC to cover the issue of Local Registered Stock. FINSAC originally issued its own bonds to cover its intervention in the financial sector. But these bonds were not convertible into cash and interest on them was paid with more FINSAC bonds.
The Finance Minister made a commitment at the start of the last financial year to convert the FINSAC bonds into regular Govern-ment debt through the issue of Local Registered Stock and in the past three months this was accomplished.
But taking on the $120 billion FINSAC debt placed enormous stress on the Budget, which was a major cause for the present Supplemen-tary Estimates.
Meanwhile, the Ministries which accounted for major increases in expenditure, are Tourism and Sport, Transport and Works and National Security and Justice.
An additional $738 million has been provided for the Tourism Ministry to assist with marketing to counter the impact of the negative international publicity the island suffered as a result of the July disturbances last year. The disturbances followed an intense gun battle in West Kingston between gunmen and members of the security forces, leaving a total of 27 persons dead.
In the Ministry of National Security and Justice (now split), $341 million was allocated to cover salary adjustments and compensation for employees as well as $135.9 million for the purchase of weapons and ammunition for the security forces arising from the West Kingston operation conducted last year. The money also went towards additional spending for the Citizens Security and Justice Project.
In the Ministry of Education, $6.9 million was provided for revised requirements for the Reform of Secondary Education and $4.8 million for the Primary Education Improvement Project.
About $290 million has been allocated to the Ministry of Transport and Works for road maintenance as well as traffic and road safety improvement.
Among those who operated within their budget, was the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Technology which saved $276 million in capital spending.
Other provisions of the Estimates are:
$24 million for the Rural Electrification Programme
$10 million for the Rapid Response Water Project
$81 million for emergency relief for flood victims following heavy rains last year
$25 million to Housing Fund for Capital Development
$60 million in drought and flood damage assistance to farmers
$10 million to Jamaica HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Project
