The Government of Jamaica’s revenues for December 2013 came up well short of budget. It would have been worse but for an unscheduled intake of grants amounting to $4.1 billion, which helped to prop up the revenues that fell short of budget by $7 billion. Overall, the fiscal operations ended up with a surplus of $5.32 billion in December compared to $5.25 billion originally projected.
For the nine months to December, the government is running $11 billion short on revenues and paid $16 billion less on housekeeping expenses and interest, excluding loan repayments, for an overall deficit of $19.6 billion that is $4.2 billion less than the amount budgeted for of $24.78 billion.
The revenue shortfall is across all major categories with international trade being one of the worse areas, down by $5.7 billion or 6 percent, Income taxes $5.2 billion or 7 percent followed by production taxes off by $1.5 billion or 2 percent. Amount spent on interest is down by $5 billion and capital expenditure by $9 billion.
The government is expected to announce in Parliament that they will close out the 2013/14 fiscal year with a virtual wipeout of the budgeted deficit by the end of March.
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