Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment's 2016 rev­enue was $188 mil­lion low­er than pro­ject­ed, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has con­firmed.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, Im­bert said while Gov­ern­ment's re­vised rev­enue pro­jec­tions for fis­cal 2016 was $44.94 bil­lion, the ac­tu­al amount col­lect­ed was $44.75 bil­lion–$188 mil­lion low­er than pro­ject­ed–which al­so led to a slight­ly high­er deficit than pro­ject­ed.

"All of the da­ta for 2016 is not yet fi­nal­ized, how­ev­er, the pro­vi­sion­al out-turn on fis­cal op­er­a­tions for 2016 has shown a deficit of $7.6 bil­lion, which is just over $300 mil­lion more than the re­vised es­ti­mates."

"The vari­ance is main­ly as a re­sult of a high­er than pro­ject­ed ex­pen­di­ture of $171 mil­lion, as well as low­er than pro­ject­ed rev­enue of $188 mil­lion," he said.

Im­bert con­firmed the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion while pi­lot­ing leg­is­la­tion to close ac­counts of the 2016 Bud­get. He said in Sep­tem­ber 2016 when the 2017 Bud­get was pre­sent­ed, re­vised es­ti­mates for 2016 were in­clud­ed in the draft es­ti­mates for 2017.

The re­vised rev­enue was pro­ject­ed at $44.94 bil­lion, com­pared to $60.29 bil­lion. Re­vised ex­pen­di­ture was pro­ject­ed at $52.2 bil­lion com­pared to $63.049 bil­lion, at Sep­tem­ber/Oc­to­ber 2015.

The min­is­ter said the 2016 rev­enue was pro­ject­ed at $44.94 bil­lion, which would have had a deficit of $7.3 bil­lion. How­ev­er, the ac­tu­al amount col­lect­ed–$44.75 bil­lion–which is low­er than the pro­jec­tion, would yield a deficit of $7.6 bil­lion.

"At the time of the bud­get, pub­lic ser­vants are work­ing on es­ti­mates be­cause they would not have had the da­ta for the last two or three weeks for the fis­cal year, so they're do­ing es­ti­mat­ed pro­jec­tions," Im­bert said.

"So they es­ti­mat­ed that rev­enue would be $44.9 bil­lion but it was, in fact, $44.75 bil­lion, so there was $188 mil­lion low­er than re­vised rev­enue.

"The neg­a­tive vari­ance was due main­ly to low­er re­ceipts on tax­es on goods and ser­vices of $91 mil­lion, tax­es on in­ter­na­tion­al trade of $45 mil­lion, non-tax rev­enue of $522 mil­lion and cap­i­tal rev­enue of $104mil­lion."

"So all of these were low­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed re­ceipts in these cat­e­gories," he added, de­tail­ing where low­er re­ceipts arose, in­clud­ing roy­al­ty on oil and gas which was low­er by $206 mil­lion due to low oil prices.