Hours before the deadline of 30 April 2014 for the Presidential assent to the Appropriation Bill that the National Assembly had approved in relation to the 2014 budget, Prime Minister Sam Hinds, in his capacity as acting President, signed the Bill authorizing amounts totaling $183.3 billion to be withdrawn from the Consolidated Fund to meet public expenditure. The Government had presented a budget of $220 billion but after the deliberations of the National Assembly, there was an overall reduction of $36.7 billion, as shown below.
This is the third consecutive year that that the Assembly amended the budget downwards because of certain concerns it had that remained unresolved. This time, however, the amendment had to take into account the ruling of the Chief Justice as regards the $20.8 billion reduction that was made
