2 Aug 2011

Solomon Islands govt decides against a supplementary budget

11:04 am on 2 August 2011

The Solomon Islands government has decided to not have a supplementary budget this year.

Senior Finance officials confirm that they have been instructed to pull from their departments and ministries unused budgets to allow for finances to spread until the budget proper is scheduled.

The finance officials confirm that some of their budgets are usually left untouched in previous years.

However they are concerned the pulling from other budgets would mean short falls for next year.

Earlier, the Solomon Islands ministry of finance said the government's development budget has shown significant under spending as of June 2011.

The Solomon Times online reports that government spending for development projects was just over 12 million US dollars against a budget allocation of about 63 million dollars.

However according to the newspaper, development budgets in previous years have generally been under spent by the middle of the year.

Meanwhile, it appears the next budget proper session of parliament will be in November.