If you hoped for something more than rhetoric from Premier Furey’s ebullient Minister of Finance or a definitive response to the debt crisis of the Province, you won’t find it in the 2021-22 Budget.
Furey likely didn’t need much
reason to delay fiscal repair, but he found it (ostensibly) in a rebound in
revenues; from a one-time cash payment of $325 million from the federal
government to aid the oil industry, other federal-provincial cost-sharing
agreements, and higher oil revenues ($1.1 billion up from $567 million).
The Government boasts revenue projections for 2021-22 of $8.5 billion, an increase of
$1.4 billion over 2020-21. The figure contrasts with revenues projected on a “cash”
basis of only $6.48 billion. That is a big difference based solely on accounting
methodology.
Frankly, the Government’s “accrual” figures look a lot like jiggery pokery!
