Government has spent more than $4.5 billion of the $37.4 billion cut from this year’s $220 billion national budget and Minister of Finance Ashni Singh yesterday tabled Financial Paper 1 of 2014 seeking the approval of the House for the extra-budgetary spending.
The paper comes up for debate at the next sitting of the National Assembly. The money was spent between January 1, 2014 and June 16. Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon on Wednesday announced that the amounts were spent.
Some of the agencies whose allocations were cut but still received money are the Government Information Agency (GINA) which received $66.4 million, and the state broadcaster National Communications Network (NCN), which received 432.6 million. These bodies were denied their allocations under the 2014 budget because A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance for Change (AFC) said that these entities do not offer services equally to all political parties.
The amounts fall under the Office of the President’s (OP’s) Current Estimates for Administrative Services and as a result of government’s refusal to delink
