Nearly $500B Allocated for Public Sector Salaries

The government plans to spend nearly half a trillion dollars for public sector compensation in the upcoming financial year.

Minister of Finance, Fayval Williams, says the sum also facilitates a critical expansion of the public sector.

The minister made the announcement as she opened the 2025-2026 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday,

She says the figure represents a twenty percent increase in the country’s public sector wage bill compared to the four-hundred-and-fourteen billion for the current fiscal year.

The continued increase in the cost of public sector compensation and its impact on revenues remains one of the top concerns of the country’s fiscal monitors.

They’ve called for a capping of public sector wages as a percentage of GDP.

However, the Minister is reminding the country that this mechanism was designed in a period when the country was significantly worse off.

Fayval Williams, Minister of Finance and the Public Service.

She says other fiscal rules currently exist that ensure government spending is sustainable.