GOB Has Their Figures Wrong
You'll remember the Government press release from last night called the "Analysis of the State of the Nation's Economy".
In that release, the government asserted that public Wages and salaries have almost tripled from 234 million dollars in 2008 to 684 million dollars in just 12 years. GOB also said that they spend 83 cents out of every dollar made in revenues on wages, salaries, and pensions. So, we asked the PSU Vice-President about those figures.
He said that from his own studies of the budget estimates for last year, their figures are off:
Dean Flowers - Vice-President, PSU
"I don't know who put together the numbers and the presentation for the Government. But, I can tell you that I'm guided by the budget estimates, and the budget estimates certainly are not telling me that wages and salaries are at 684 million dollars. My numbers - not my numbers, the government numbers in the budget estimates for salaries alone is 453 million dollars. That's a huge difference when you look at 684 million If you were to dump the pension estimates and the ex rata payments in there, that's another 95 million dollars. So, that would take you up to 548 million dollars. Again, that 548 million dollars are almost 140 million dollars different than what the government reported yesterday. It's not my number. It's the Ministry of Finance's numbers in the budget estimates. The wage bill for 20/21 is showing 548 million."
On the assertion that 83 cents out of every dollar are going to wages, salaries, and pensions, he says that from his review of the numbers, the government actually spent 65 cents. He did acknowledge that this is a high figure.
Channel 7