Revenues for the Jamaican Government rocketed sharply in April, this year over inflows in 2020 and 2019 and was up above the 2021 forecast by $3.4 billion to $75 billion to exceed the forecast of $72 billion.
Dr. Nigel Clarke, Jamaica’s Minister of Finance
The improvement saw most categories of revenues beating the budget, with taxes collected from Income and profits delivering $1.1 billion more than budget, with all categories performing above budget. The production and consumption category delivered a $1 billion increase and Production and consumption taxes contributed $1.3 billion more in revenues.
Government’s fiscal operations ended with a surplus of $12 billion for the month compared to a budgeted forecast of $5.2 billion, the results of the increase in revenues and a $3.4 billion fall in spending below budget.
Recurrent expenditure accounted for $56 billion of total expenditure, compared to forecast of $59 billion and capital expenditure fell just $326 million short of forecast to end at $7.7 billion. Salaries and wages consumed $692 million less than was budgeted for and programmes (recurrent expenditure excluding wages, interest and capital spending) saw $2.7 billion less spent than the budgeted $25.3 billion with outflows of $22.6 billion.
The government borrowed nearly a billion less than projected, with an intake of $14.6 billion compared to forecast of $15.5 billion and paid back $5.35 billion versus $4.6 billion projected.
The primary surplus jumped from $16 billion to $21.3 billion at the end of the first month of the fiscal year.
