A ‘tidy up’ exercise for government spending successfully made its way through the Legislative Assembly.
The Supplementary Appropriation (July to June 2005) (No.2) Bill 2005 Bill was passed on Wednesday.
Among its features was the authorisation for the transferral of $4.9 million from the Environmental Protection Fund to the operating bank account in respect of an item of the same amount for hurricane debris removal.
Financial Secretary Kenneth Jefferson had told the House on Monday that the bill should be viewed as a necessary tidy up procedure.
Matters in it were mainly Hurricane Ivan related and represented extraordinary items rather than the ongoing position, he said.
In its figures the bill even included negative amounts which showed changed appropriations.
Those amounts reflected the fact that some agencies planned to under expend on existing appropriations, with several capital projects being deferred, he said.
One of the more significant items in the bill was a $20 million insurance write-off which represented the difference between the agreed settlement for damage to government property caused by Hurricane Ivan and the amount the government’s insurer was able to pay, he explained.
Mr. Jefferson said he wanted to stress that the extraordinary items were one-off in nature and did not reflect the government’s ongoing fiscal policy.
The government had achieved a healthy operating surplus, he told the House.
Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts said most of the changes reflected in it were as a direct result of Hurricane Ivan and attempts to remedy the effects of it.
It was a tidy up exercise which had to be done to comply with the law, he told the House.
Opposition Member Rolston Anglin said that to see the way the economy had responded after Hurricane Ivan was something they should all feel justly proud about and should instil a greater level of confidence.
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