The Solomon Islands government is already describing next years' budget as a difficult one without the budgetary support from Australia.
The Under Secretary in the Department of Finance, Collin Johnson, says it will be a real test of the government's revenue:
"Australian budget support that was provided in 2004, which equated to about sixty million dollars, was provided on a temporary basis only, those funds won't be available in 2005, so the recurrent budget will be funded virtually from Solomon Island's own resources, except for education where New Zealand provides some funding, so it will be a difficult budget. So I guess the theme we want form the budget is how to improve service delivery from existing resources. ..........."
Mr Johnson says while revenue and expenditure has stabilised, next year's budget will be a challenge.
