… And what about salaries?

All that influx of money, however, will not do much to boost the salaries of public officers. Prime Minister Dean Barrow says he has received submissions from the Pubic Service Union, Teacher’s Union and the Association of Senior Managers, but the economic situation does not provide room for a pay raise.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“They are talking about increases that would be in the region of maybe thirty million dollars additionally per year—that’s going to be a problem. While we can get the concessionary monies that I have talked about for infrastructure and while that is going to provide a boost for the economy, in terms of government revenues, we have been hurt dramatically by the fall in oil prices. It is not just that now there is no longer any option, any chance of getting a windfall tax, even our regular income tax revenue will go down because of the fall in oil prices. So government and the country will have a hard time next year with respect to the recurrent budget, with respect to this whole question of an increase in salaries for public officers. I am afraid that while we very much would want to help and while we understand that people need additional monies to cope with the increases that have occurred in terms of the cost of living, even though I say those should be going back down, it’s not there; it’s not going to be there. And so I expect that there will have to be some hard bargaining, between us and the unions.”