As the pop­u­la­tion counts down the hours to Mon­day's pre­sen­ta­tion of the ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed 2013 bud­get, one of the is­sues of end­less spec­u­la­tion is what min­istries will get the largest al­lo­ca­tions and whether the amount of mon­ey al­lot­ed to sub­si­dies and trans­fers will be cut. The ac­tu­al bud­get al­lo­ca­tions will re­main a se­cret to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion un­til al­most the end of Mon­day's pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2013 bud­get.

But na­tion­al bud­gets have a ten­den­cy to re­peat the pat­terns of pre­vi­ous years, which means that the 2013 bud­get is like­ly to look a great deal like 2012's. If that is the case, the pop­u­la­tion should ex­pect that the min­istry re­ceiv­ing the largest al­lo­ca­tion will be...not the Min­istry of Health or Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, but the Min­istry of Fi­nance. In the 2012, the Min­istry of Fi­nance re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of 9.4 bil­lion dol­lars, which was 16.5 per cent of the to­tal es­ti­mat­ed bud­get of 57 bil­lion dol­lars.

The doc­u­ment "Draft Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture for the 2012 fi­nan­cial year" al­so re­veals that the sec­ond largest al­lo­ca­tion did not ac­tu­al­ly go to a min­istry but to a cat­e­go­ry of ex­pen­di­ture head­ed "Charges on ac­count of the pub­lic debt". This al­lo­ca­tion of 6.6 bil­lion dol­lars, which was equal to 11.6 per cent of the 57 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed, was main­ly used to pay the in­ter­est on lo­cal and for­eign debt...It's es­ti­mat­ed that a to­tal of 8 bil­lion was spent on debt ser­vic­ing in the cur­rent year.

Bud­get Fo­cus 28-09-2012

The third largest al­lo­ca­tion in 2012 went to ed­u­ca­tion, which re­ceived a to­tal of 6.5 bil­lion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­ceiv­ing 4 bil­lion and the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion get­ting 2.5 bil­lion. In­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty re­ceived a to­tal of $5.1 bil­lion, with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­ceiv­ing 3.5 bil­lion and the po­lice ser­vice get­ting an al­lo­ca­tion of 1.6 bil­lion dol­lars.

Looked at an­oth­er way, the cat­e­go­ry of trans­fers and sub­si­dies-which in­cludes every­thing from the fu­el sub­si­dies to the grants hand­ed out by the Min­istry of the Peo­ple-re­ceived a to­tal of 29.5 bil­lion for 2012. That means that for every dol­lar spent by the Gov­ern­ment, 51 cents went to C-DAP, G.A.T.E, the fu­el sub­sidy, sub­sidised hous­es, free ed­u­ca­tion and the many, many pub­lic as­sis­tance pro­grammes paid for by the Gov­ern­ment. Half of the mon­ey spent by the Gov­ern­ment goes right back to the peo­ple.

If cuts are to be made to the na­tion­al bud­get in the 2013 bud­get, it is like­ly to come from this area of trans­fers and sub­si­dies. In con­trast, pub­lic ser­vants re­ceived a to­tal of 8 bil­lion dol­lars or 14 per cent of the to­tal bud­get.