Ap­pox­i­mate­ly $1.8 bil­lion of the $2.8 bil­lion ap­proved by Par­lia­ment in the Fi­nance (Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) (Fi­nan­cial Year 2013) Bill 2013 on Wednes­day has been al­lo­cat­ed for set­tle­ment of wages and salaries for 2008-2010 col­lec­tive agree­ments, as well as in­ter­im set­tle­ments for the 2011-2013 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said this is in keep­ing with the gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to end pro­tract­ed ne­go­ti­a­tion and en­sure in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions commt­ments and col­lec­tive agree­ments are more cur­rent.

Howai said set­tle­ment of sev­er­al salary and wage agree­ments had placed an ad­di­tion­al bur­den on the na­tion­al bud­get.

"Many of the agree­ments now be­ing set­tled re­late to the 2008-2010 col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od, but we in­tend to hold to our com­mit­ment to en­sure that peo­ple in work can ben­e­fit from en­hanced wages and salaries right away, rather than hav­ing to wait long pe­ri­ods for retroac­tive pay­ments," he said.

Howai added: "We are, how­ev­er, en­cour­aged, that these in­creas­es will be tak­ing place in an en­vi­ron­ment of con­tin­ued over­all growth in the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors and in­creased rev­enues of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment,."

The min­is­ter said al­though he has asked for in­creas­es in the mid-year re­view, he still ex­pects ex­pen­di­ture for the year to come in with­in the over­all fig­ures orig­i­nal­ly bud­get­ed.

He said as at the end of March, re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture was well with­in the Bud­get and the fis­cal ac­counts showed that this ex­pen­di­ture was al­most $3 bil­lion be­low bud­get.

Among those in line for in­creased fund­ing are the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources; the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture; the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing; the Min­istry of Sport; the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion.

Un­der­scor­ing the Gov­ern­ment's fo­cus on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, Howai said: "While there have been some chal­lenges, the gov­ern­ment's fo­cus on eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment has pro­gressed well.

"Hav­ing start­ed with mea­sures to halt the eco­nom­ic de­cline, the fo­cus is now mov­ing to gen­er­at­ing not sim­ply growth, but growth that is self-sus­tain­ing," he said.

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