The National Coalition For Caymanians government plans to amend legislation to double the length of the mandated three-month post-election timeframe to bring a pre-budget Strategic Policy Statement in election years.
In a statement released on Friday, the government said it is proposing to amend the budget process allowing a newly-elected administration six months to deliver “a more accurate” two-year Strategic Policy Statement to Parliament in an election year.
Cabinet approved a bill to amend the Public Management and Finance Act (2020 Revision) in its meeting on 11 June.
A Strategic Policy Statement, which is drawn up prior to a budget, outlines Cabinet’s planned broad and specific outcomes and economic forecasts and targets for the upcoming financial year and the following two years. In election years, it must be presented to Parliament three months after a national vote, and in other years no later than 1 May.
“The Bill is intended to be brought to Parliament later this month and will change the date of the presentation of the Strategic Policy Statement, or SPS, to Parliament – in the year of a General Election only – from three months to six months after the General Election date,” the government statement noted.
Minister for Finance and Economic Development Rolston Anglin said in the statement, “After a General Election, the incoming Government currently has three months to present our Strategic Policy Statement, which is the roadmap for how we plan, budget, and spend responsibly.
“But we have found that three months is just not enough time to ensure we are planning responsibly and strategically, with all of the information we need and taking all potential contingencies into account. So, we are proposing to extend the deadline to deliver the SPS to six months, which would take us to 31 October, by which date the SPS would be presented to Parliament.”
More time to plan
He added that extending the time period “gives us time to plan properly; improve accuracy in our budgeting; and support more responsible, transparent financial decisions as part of our bigger push to modernise Government’s budget process”.
Premier André Ebanks said in the statement the proposed change was “just the start” of a “concerted effort to innovate systems and processes that may have been in existence for the past two decades, or longer, but are ripe for reform to introduce greater efficiency and precision”.
Outlining why the government plans to move ahead with altering the time frame for bringing the Strategic Policy Statement in an election year, Anglin noted that Parliament will be on summer recess on 31 July, the date when the statement would be due to be presented in the House.
Under the Standing Orders 2025, a recess is mandatory from the first week of July until the first week of September each year.
Anglin said, “There just isn’t time before Parliament recesses on 30 June for the Government to prepare an SPS that is meaningful and reliable.”
He also stated that the Ministry of Finance is currently modernising the government’s budgeting and reporting framework to present the first outcome-based budget for 2028 to 2029, which would involve combining the SPS with the budget, and eliminate the need for separate processes.
“And finally, since the SPS is usually presented to Parliament a few months before the Budget, the financial forecasts contained in the SPS consistently differ in a significant way to the financial forecasts contained in the Budget,” he said.
“This has been demonstrated for the past 12 financial years, with the 2024 to 2026 SPS presented in April 2023 showing an operating surplus that was 44 percent higher than that projected in the 2024 to 2025 budget which was presented to Parliament in December 2023,” Anglin added.
He said the bill would strengthen government’s ability to deliver “responsible financial management and transparent budgeting, which are the core principles of good governance and public trust”.
“We intend to ensure that public funds are being strategically directed to our key national priorities, and are being used efficiently and effectively to do the most good for the people of our Islands,” he added.
The Public Management and Finance (Amendment) Bill, 2025 was published in The Cayman Islands Gazette on 13 June 2025, and can be found at: https://www.gov.ky/publication-detail/legislation-gazette-26-2025 and https://www.gov.ky/publication-detail/public-management-and-finance-(amendment)-bill,-2025,-(lg26,-s1)
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