THE Minister of Finance and Treasury, Hon, Manasseh Sogavare launched the 2025 Budget Strategy on Friday 6th September – marking the beginning of the 2025 budget formulation process.
Launched on the theme of “Accelerating Accountable and Transformative Investments: A Pathway Towards a Resilient and Sustainable Economy”, the 2025 budget strategy aims to support the effective implementation of the Government’s policy priorities, including guidelines for the preparation and implementation of the 2025 Budget.
The theme calls for collective efforts to speed up innovative changes to increase productivity, improve access and connectivity, and improve the quality and delivery of services while at the same time building the Government’s ability and capacity to withstand, adapt, and cope against domestic and external shocks, leaving tangible legacy investments for young Solomon Islanders in the future.
The government aims to achieve its policy direction and priorities in 2025, guided by the following six key principles;
- Promote Transformative and Sustainable Growth;
- Maintaining an Affordable Budget;
- Safeguard Fiscal Stability;
- Improve Service Delivery through Quality Spending;
- Improve National Unity and Empower People; and
- Improve Good Governance and Accountability
Sogavare said the government believes that unless we take transformative actions, we will never move out from the “Business as Usual” way of doing business.
“This is why the government sees it fit to bring forth a “transformative agenda”, to change the business as usual attitude, to getting things done by investing in transformational investments in infrastructures, institutional and legislative reforms, delivery of quality social services and empowerment of our people through the creation of economic and social opportunities,” Sogavare said.
The GNUT believes that investment in key economic infrastructures is critical to diversifying the Economy. Strengthening the legal framework to create certainty and confidence for investors is also critical to enhance economic recovery and build resilience to achieve transformative growth in the short to medium term.
The 2025 Budget strives to achieve two important objectives, including fast-tracking investment in key economic infrastructure to diversify the economy to achieve transformational economic growth and strengthening the delivery of services to people.
According to Sogavare, the 2025 Budget is framed based on the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth projected at 3.4 percent in 2025, this is an increase of 0.6 percent from 2.8 percent in 2024. This growth rate is driven by a projected inflation rate of 2 to 4 percent in 2025.
In terms of revenue, the government is proposing to collect a total domestic revenue of $3,514.5 million, an increase of 6 percent from 2024 original estimates of $3,312.0 million. On the expenditure side, the total consolidated expenditure is $4,312.2 million.
Of the total SIG expenditure, payroll is capped at $1,632.4 million, $2,003.1 million for other charges, and $656.7 million for the development budget. Contingency warrant provision is $20.0 million.
Donor-funded recurrent sector budget support is $39.8 million.
The above budget estimates show that the government has an overall planned budget deficit of $757.9 million in 2025. Of this amount, a total of $580 million of development financing has been secured from external sources and domestic borrowings.
