Last week, we began a discussion of the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2019 which have since been approved by the National Assembly. The related Bill, which authorizes the withdrawal of $277.4 billion from the Consolidated Fund to meet the cost of the Government’s programmes and activities, is expected to be assented to by the President before year-end. An additional sum of $23.2 billion has been provided to meet statutory expenditure such as the servicing of the public debt and the cost of operations of constitutional agencies, giving a total of $300.6 billion to be expended in 2019. However, anticipated revenue collections amount to $270.0 billion, giving a budget deficit of $30.6 billion.
We had expressed our deep concern about continuing practice of having deficit budgeting. This has increased four-fold in the last five years, compared with the average annual deficit during the period 1992 to 2013. These deficits have the effect of progressively increasing the overdraft on the Consolidated Fund. Having examined the reports of the Auditor General for the years 1992 to 2017, we had estimated that the overdraft would reach $210 billion by the end of 2019. The Minister of Finance has, however, disputed this figure, claiming that the Governor of the Bank of Guyana has confirmed that as of 7 December 2018, the overdraft on the Consolidated Fund was $62.157 billion.
Readers are directed to page 479 of the 2017 Auditor General’s report which shows the Statement of Current Assets and Liabilities of the Government as at 31 December 2017, prepared by the Accountant General and duly certified by the Minister of Finance. In that statement, the new Consolidated Fund Account No. 407 and the old account No. 400 showed overdrafts of $109.1 billion and $46.8 billion respectively, giving a total overdraft of $155.9 billion as at the end of 2017. Readers are also referred to pages 28-29 of the Auditor General’s report where these two figures are repeated, and there is a graph showing the movement of the overdraft on these two accounts from 2004 to 2017.
