The Solomon Islands finance minister says the budget he presented this week for its second reading in parliament will create jobs.
Rick Hou says next year's 480 million US dollar budget is the biggest in the country's history.
He says health and education account for almost 300 million dollars worth of recurrent funding but the government's main development focus is the rural sector.
Mr Hou says a lot of money has been allocated to infrastructure projects, an area in which more people will be able to get work.
"The development budget is a big one which will involve a lot of private sector companies and these will be civil engineering companies and shipping companies and all private sector providers of service."
Mr Hou says although government ministries will administer the funding of the infrastructure work all programmes will go through the normal tender process.
