The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

THE Government is preparing to make a ‘huge jump’ in its short-term borrowing threshold to 60 per cent.

Reforms tabled in the House of Assembly plan to increase the Government’s ‘short-term debt limit to 60 per cent of average ordinary revenue’.

The previous limit, set in the pre-independence era by the Public Treasury Bills Act 1959, was ‘20 per cent or ordinary revenue’.

The magnitude of such an increase, which is three-fold in percentage terms, illustrates the fiscal problems facing the Government, and its need for increased short-term borrowing to meet spending commitments already made - largely by the former Ingraham administration.

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