The econ­o­my has per­formed bet­ter in 2011 than an­tic­i­pat­ed, since the Gov­ern­ment did not spend some $2 bil­lion which was ex­pect­ed to have been spent, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said yes­ter­day. Dook­er­an was pi­lot­ing a fi­nance mo­tion dur­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives' first sit­ting for the new year. The mo­tion was based on a meet­ing of the House's Fi­nance Com­mit­tee on Wednes­day which dealt with sup­ple­men­ta­tion and vari­a­tion of sums in the 2012 bud­get. Not­ing the im­proved per­for­mance of the econ­o­my, Dook­er­an said: "Not on­ly did we not spend near to $2 bil­lion of which we had pro­grammed to spend, we were al­so for­tu­nate to have an in­creased rev­enue po­si­tion of $1.9 bil­lion."

Dook­er­an said that com­prised oil in­take and a bet­ter per­for­mance in tax amnesty that the Gov­ern­ment had im­ple­ment­ed. "So we end 2011 with a sol­id cen­tral gov­ern­ment bal­ance sheet," he added. Dook­er­an dis­put­ed yes­ter­day's Trinidad Guardian news­pa­per re­port in­ter­pre­ta­tion which stat­ed that yes­ter­day's pro­ceed­ings were to seek ap­proval for ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture of $2.7 bil­lion. "In fact, what we are do­ing is to en­sure par­lia­men­tary ap­proval is sought to bring to ac­count, ex­pen­di­ture in­curred by min­is­te­r­i­al ap­proval from trea­sury de­posits," he said. "In oth­er words, these were al­lo­ca­tions that were made dur­ing the course of the year for which there were was no item in the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion (bud­get) Bill or the lim­its were not there." He said the $2.7 bil­lion re­ferred to, re­sult­ed from four ad­vances from trea­sury de­posits.

These four ad­vances per­tain to the fol­low­ing projects:

• con­struc­tion of Pt Fortin high­way-$1.5 bil­lion;

• pro­vi­sion of HCU pay­ments-$100 mil­lion.

• Cli­co pay­ments-$ 748 mil­lion; and

• com­ple­tion of Gen­er­a­tion com­pa­ny at Pt Fortin-$ 354.1 mil­lion.

Dook­er­an said Par­lia­ment was be­ing asked to give sup­ple­men­ta­tion to meet the ad­vances through the trea­sury de­posit of the four projects, and ap­prove vari­a­tions in min­istries. He said that in 2011, there was ex­pect­ed pro­vi­sion­al ex­pen­di­ture of $50.9 bil­lion and re­vised ex­pen­di­ture of $53 bil­lion. Of this, he said, there was an "un­der­ex­pen­di­ture" of $2.1 bil­lion. The un­der­ex­pen­di­ture com­prised a drop in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture of $1.1 bil­lion. This in­clud­ed salaries, CO­LA and trav­el­ling and sub­sis­tences, as well as con­tract em­ploy­ment of cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the THA with­in $263 mil­lion. The un­der­ex­pen­di­ture al­so in­clud­ed $259 mil­lion on in­ter­est pay­ments as the Gov­ern­ment had not pro­ceed­ed in seek­ing new loans.

He said the in­ter­est pay­ment fell by $81.9 bil­lion, and cur­rent trans­fers by $467 mil­lion. He said cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture al­so showed a re­duc­tion in ex­pen­di­ture. This was pro­grammed to be $ 7.5 bil­lion, but turned out to be be $6.6 bil­lion. This rep­re­sent­ed $946 mil­lion re­lat­ed to the PSIP. Dook­er­an said the Gov­ern­ment would short­ly bring the Fi­nance Act based on the 2012 bud­get pro­pos­als and would ex­am­ine mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to chart 2012 eco­nom­ic be­hav­iour . Dur­ing yes­ter­day's ses­sion, Gen­der Min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose Greaves said the Gov­ern­ment would be pre­sent­ing up­grad­ed leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly against sex­u­al abuse.