Prime Minister & Minister of Finance Roosevelt Skerrit will present a budget of over 940 million dollars to the Dominica Parliament on Tuesday, July 28.
Documents from the Draft Estimates for expenditure for the financial year 2020/21 released disclosed the figure to be $941,179,940.00
The total recurrent expenditure is $514,931,535.00 with the ministry of finance taking the largest chunk of the budget at a little over $154 million dollars. Seventy-four million goes to Education and Human resource, fifty-nine million for Health and New Wellness and fifty-two million for Public Works and the Digital Economy.
Total capital expenditure is $427,248,405.00 with one hundred & seventeen million going to Housing & Urban development, seventy-one million for Public Works & the Digital Economy, sixty-one million for the Ministry of Environment.
Skerrit will also be seeking Parliament’s approval for an overdraft of fifty-six million, five hundred thousand dollars to meet the Central government’s current overdraft requirements, and another sum of five million dollars to meet the guarantee of overdrafts to statutory boards and public corporations.
He will also seek Parliament’s approval for a loan at the National Bank of Dominica (NBD) in the amount of one hundred twenty-five million dollars to deal with challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Maria. That loan will be at an interest rate of four percent and a repayment plan of twenty years with a moratorium on principal and interest repayment for the first 24 months.