CIG claims $50M surplus
(CNS): Government officials are claiming that the public purse will have a surplus of more than $50 million at the fiscal year-end. The pre-election financial report by the financial secretary and his team, which had no input from elected officials, was gazetted last night at the eleventh hour in accordance with the Public Management and Finance Law. According to the report, after four years of fiscal crisis in government, it has finally managed to end a financial year with some cash left over. Although it is more than $30 million short of the budget predictions approved by the UK last year, it at least presents the next administration with hope that Cayman is still capable of earning more than it spends.
The government’s administrative officials are obligated to create a pre-election report, which must be published by 24 April, a deadline narrowly made when the report was published on the government’s gazette website on Wednesday night around 9pm. The report was shown to Cabinet members on Tuesday and signed off by the premier and deputy premier as an accurate prediction of public finances for this year.
The report is believed to reflect a relatively true position, as government neither collects or spends significant amounts of money during the final quarter of the financial year, which now has just over two months left.
The government’s bank balance for the entire public sector is also smaller than forecast in the original budget but officials believe that there will be over $157 million in the bank account by the end of the year. This is more than $21 million short of the predictions in the original budget delivered in July last year, after the former premier struggled in the face of UK pressure to balance the books.
Government debt still remains at around $718 million when statutory authorities are included and, as a result, CIG will still fail to comply with the debt servicing ratio, which has to be less than ten percent of operating revenue.
According to the report, government earned some $31 million less than expected but expenses were also fractionally less than forecasted, at just $600,000 less than planned.
The report also reveals that inflation is higher in Cayman than was forecast for this year, as is the GDP, but unemployment has levelled off at one point less than last year at 6.1, so the statistics state.
See full report below.
Category: Politics
Really one would think things would have improved since we now (supposedly) have the "no financial expert" out of the way.
Same old porpaganda. They really take us for fools!
lol dont let Ken Jefferson fool you. He did the same thing 4 years ago and then it went into a deficit.
The Government is broke and thereis a deficit. if there is a surplus why do they keep getting loans.
BS folks.
Pardon my French, but what a load of old bollocks.
Say what you want … both Obama and Cameron would sell a kidney in exchange for our economy.
You mean they both have failing kidneys?
Ah comparatives! Always make you feel better, or excuse poor behaviour. I may be grossly obese through overeating, but at least I don't have cancer. That cancer guy would cut his hand off if he could only be me. We'll sure I blew the money for the kids education at the bar and casino, or up my nose, but at least I am not living in the gutter (yet). Sheesh! With decent management or prudence we could be so much better off, but as long as we are better off than some other guy, thats ok.
"We are still deeply in debt, BUT….not as deeply in debt as we thought we were SO….there is a surplus! Of the debt… we thought we were going to have."
II was going to buy a $175 pair of Nikes.
But I didn't.
So…..I saved $175.00!!!
Tomorrow…I'm not going to buy a flat screen tv. or a Porsche.
Are these figures being declared by the same Financial Secretary that declared an 80 plus million surplus during the last election. I need more proof before I could believe any of this.
Can I have my 3.2% COLA back now? I promise I'll vote for you!!!
No. You are overpaid as it is. If you don't like it find another job.
I think it washed up on the Brac last weekend.
Relatively true! As opposed to what – almost true? Relative to prior figures which were completely untrue?
We're still broke from our debts. Don't let the title of this article mislead you. The UDP (United Dumb People) want you to think we have money.
Well excuse me! If they have this surplus how is it that they're not paying my company money that they owe us for over six months. All we get are promises but no cheque. Explain that please. Damn foolishness.
It is a theoretical surplus. However, you should ask and if necessary, file an FOI to see if your company's invoice is included in the debts owed but not paid. If it is not, then the whole thing is garbage. I would be willing to bet that pensions are not being accrued for in the same way.
$80mil deficit when taking office… after four years now a $50mil surplus. Impressive
Remember that budgets are annual sothe figures you quote are per year and also guesses/hopes.
AHHHH Haaaaa haaaa haaaaaa….. I laughed out loud just at the headline. What utter and complete bullshit, of course, but what's really hilarious is the audacity of the bullshitter to try to recycle this bullshit yet again, when the very same bullshit has been undeniably identified as bullshit each and every previous time they've pulled this particular pile of bullshit out of the back room and put it on their grubby little silver platter and circulated it as their latest crowning achievement, as if we hadn't seen it before (all while wearing that telling smile that they use to show everybody how very proud they are of their "crowning achievement"). This defies credibility to the point where one has to wonder about the sanity of the people making the claim, but it is high comedy in any event.
lol This government has their own unique way of doing mathematics!!!
The civil servants think that accrual accounting is actually "cruel accounting". They really don't get it.
We have to bear in mind this is not just any old gowerment claiming this. This is the please not again gowerment, folks, the remnants of the globally famous, forever honerable and transparent gowerment claiming this one month before election day.
The current financial secretary and his team have no credibility.
Please remember the numbers before and after the last election.
It is all smokes and mirrors! How convenient to achieve a surplus before election time.
Yes, it certainly gave me pause for thought. Then I woke up.
Folks let's get real, if we were allowed to not pay our bills on time we would have a surplus too.
Lets get real, the country is bankrupt and the vast majority of the last elected members are fibbing to us just to get re-elected.
They have distroyed our economy with their Parties wish lists expenditure,
we can no longer continue to hand our Country back to the people (UDP- PPM, PPM-UDP, UDP-PPM) that's nuts, THAT put us in this mess.
Would you continue to carry your car for repaird to the same 2 incompetent mechanics
over and over, and keep accepting their excuses for 12 years? Thaught not.
Folks our DEBT IS OVER $1,000,000,000.00, 1 Billion + dollars.
Now think "our Country" and remove all those who created these problems over the last 12 years.
and vote for people with a proven succesful track record. Please,
Please put our Islands 1st. this time, if we do we all win.
As Bugs Bunny once famously said "What a Maroon" take your fingers off the keyboard before you hurt yourself, go read the document and then try to post again … idiot.
Sorry but you have a lot of errors in your post. The debt is nowhere near 1 billion dollars, even when the Authority's are included and some of that is very old debt. Also, if accrual accounting is being done properly, yes, I said IF, it doesn't matter if you have paid your bills or not. Part of any surplus/deficit projection should be accruals for unpaid bills – pensions etc….. Are these included? A budget is simply an ESTIMATE of expenses vs income for a year.
If there actually is $50mln in revenue surplus, it would need to be applied against the >$30mln a year in interest payments we are saddled with just to service our existing debtload of $718mln. Even if 100% of that money were to be directed (as it properly should be) to lowering our debt, we would only have approx $20mln to apply against principal. At that pace of repayment, we're looking at decades just to get out of the hole. We are broke. Don't let any party sway you into thinking otherwise. Thanks to previous administrations' ineptitude, we cannot afford major infrastructure spending on our own for decades to come. In fact, as it stands now, our children might not even be able to afford major capital projects, and we need to hire/elect leaders to the LA that understand this reality.
That percentage of debt repayment is well below what most of us are allowed to borrow from the bank! Most banks will let you have a repayment of 1/3 of your household income. So, say our income is projected to be 550 million, a debt repayment that you talk about of 30 million is 5%.
Debt that is paying for a govt admin building instead of paying rent and ridiculous utility bills is good debt. Debt to pay to keep the Turtle Farm as a "losing concern" Florida style attraction is bad debt. So is debt as a result of jetting around the world on our dime. Go inside the former CIHS (John Gray) school and tell us we didn't need to condemn that a long time ago – I dare you!
"The report is believed to reflect a relatively true position as government neither collects are spends significant amounts of money during the final quarter of the financial year which now has just over two months to go"
Oh yeah.., tell that to Alden, Arden and Kurt, after what the same Govt financial section told them before the 2009 elections.
Un-audited of course!
You actually mean unauditable.
BULL#$#$
Really? And will this figure change dramatically for the worse after the election like it did last time? Will there be no auditing and producing of proper financials like after the last election? We all know that a budget is just a guess or a hope and is often used as a political tool, especially right before an election.
Interesting that so many of you are viewing this as a political ploy when the article clearly states that this report "had no input from elected officials,"
Facts are a beautiful thing…
"had no input from elected officials,"
"Facts are a beautiful thing…"
I hope you are being ironic. 🙂
The problem is, many of them are too lazy to read the document, they just bandwagon on what others are saying and how CNS has chosen to spin it without even looking at the document themselves, at truly sad state of affairs, but drink up that SNS kool aid boys, drink up 🙂
Another financial wizard pulls their head out the sand…….13:21
If true it is a good start, but still a long way to go. Now we need to make sure we elect people who will not steal it or spend it frivously..
We will never know the truth of these pie-in-the-sky figures until the day when:
1. All government departments learn to properly do their accounts;
2. All (properly done) accounts have been subjected to an audit by the Auditor General's office and received an unqualified audit report.
Until that day I don't believe one word these guys say about the state of our finances. I don't want one of their crappy projections I want to see the real figures, so I can see what they are doing with the public's money.
Perhaps you should call the AuditorGeneral and ask him for the reports that he has been sitting on for the past two years that he hasn't audited yet. Someone asked recently, what watches the watcher, it was a very good question.
Or give it away. Or buy wotes with it
If it's true then monkeys will fly out of my butt and dance the cha cha. What you really need is to just start the whole government over again with a clean sweep. PS – I can't believe you are even entertaining the possibility that they are not lying to you. How could you even contemplate the idea that they are speaking the truth at this point???
The PNA party is doing well. They are in fact doing better than when they were with the UDP. Well done.
Lol wait… You really think a $50mil surplus was all generated in the last few months by the PNA?
Agreed. One can look at this situation as a PNA failure to collect all revenues. But we all know those revenues were never going to materialize. The fact that expenses are on track makes me believe that all expenses have not yet been accrued.
Are the expenses recorded on a cash basis or accrual basis?
Or just an indication of where teh real problem lies. the Civil Service can aparently say how much they're going to spend and then spend to that amount. The politicians make up what they're going to collect and then …
Legally they should be done on an accrual basis.
Answer: They are accrued on "Cayman Basis".
They're doing very well indeed. Every day they're getting one day closer to being kicked out of our Government forever.
Anyone else notice that $50 million equates to $10 million per month for the 5 months that McKeeva had left on his world tour before it was abruptly halted?
Those credit cards must be made of steel.
I wonder whose calculator Mr. Jefferson used this time…
We owe $718 million….. and we have a "surplus" of more than $50 million? I wish my bank kept records for me using that system!
An organization/business entity can have liabilities of the magnitude mentioned , $718 miillion, and can still produce a surplus of $ 50 million for its present fiscal year as long as expenses are less than revenues. Being these figures are unaudited, and I do not for sure if it is cash surplus or surplus on accrual basis, I do not know if they can be totally relied on, If it is a cash surplus generated for the year of $50 million, it can be achieved by deferring payment of liabilities. If it is on an accraul basis, $ 50 million could possibly be achieved without taking into account such items as bad debts and depreciation as well as under-accrual of government liabilities
Confucious say, man who read document get answer to man question, many have tried to answer this riddle before, but it seems to be an alien concept.
"$30million short of the budget predictions"
I wonder why? Shall we do a quick tally of the travel, failed negotiations and reckless expenditure over the last 4 years, I think thats where you will find it went.
Right, a $50 million dollar surplus claim, four weeks before elections…
50m surplus projected now. 30m surplus actual at June 30 unaudited. However if audited surplus is actually a deficit. Have all liabilities been accrued? Why do I have a feeling this surplus was derived based on calculations made on the back of a pack of Marlboro ultra lights?
The auditors have done an excellent job! Oh…. The accounts have not been audited? Nevermind…
Right………… and if you buy that, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona I’ll sell to you for a great price! Ain’t it amazing how we suddenly have a surplus at election time?
Heck right after you posted this I saw some West Bayers packing their fishing gear and overheard them saying they were headed for Arizona to buy some really cheap waterfront property where big wahoo are caught right in the people's backyards. (You know how rumours grow.) If West Bayers bought Makeewah's bullsh_t they will buy anything!
Gee, I wish I could use their accounting system for my personal finances; I owe $10,000, but I really have an excess of $3,000, and my projections are that I'll have a $15,000 surplus by the end of the year, so my financial position at this time is $7,000.
"The report is believed to reflect a relatively true position…….." Funny, I don't recall that language in the GAAP. I believe we must be relatively gullible.
When I read the headline I thought -FANTASTIC. Then I read the surplus was 'according to the financial secretary'.