Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter

Prime Minister Bruce Golding has warned that the supplementary estimates for this fiscal year will be a millstone around the neck of Finance Minister Audley Shaw.

The estimates have not yet been tabled in the House of Representatives but there are signs that the revised figures may be well above the $489.5-billion Budget Shaw presented to the country in April.

Shaw's budget was predicated on an inflation projection of eight to nine per cent. Already, inflation has reached 11 per cent. Opposition Spokesman on Finance Dr Omar Davies had long suggested that Shaw's budget was not credible.

Speaking in Parliament Tuesday, the prime minister urged members of parliament to hold strain, saying the Opposition People's National Party (PNP), which held power from 1989 to 2007, had saddled the country with severe debt.

Salaries

The prime minister pointed to the recent settlement in the realignment of teachers' salaries as one item that busted Shaw's budget.

The Jamaica Teachers' Associa-tion last week inked a salary-and-fringe-benefit agreement with the Government, which will see salaries increase to 80 per cent of their colleagues in the private sector.

The new agreement is for the 2008-2010 contract period and will cost the Government $15 billion. Golding complained that there was no provision in the budget to accommodate the increase and stressed that fiscal leg room had to be found to find the funds and address other spending.

"We did not plan for (Tropical Storm) Gustav this year, nor did we plan for the losses that we are incurring at Clarendon Alumina products, which are now ranging between US$16 million and US$25 million per month," the prime minister said.

Gustav sideswiped eastern Jamaica in August, causing $14.6 billion in damage.

Production costs

The PNP has been criticised by Government for having entered into forward-sales alumina agreement with Glencore, a deal, Shaw said, which made no allowance for increases in energy or production costs.

Shaw has claimed that the value of alumina has spiked and Jamaica has not been able to benefit because it is locked into the contract until 2012.

"We are losing a billion (dollars) per month!" Golding said.

"That cap arrangement, including the forward sale at a fixed price, is now costing us more than the Air Jamaica losses. That is how bad it is."

In the last financial year, the loss-making airline, which Government is trying to divest, recorded an operating deficit of more than US$170 million.

Burden

Golding suggested that parliamentarians, like the biblical Simon of Cyrene, would have to help Shaw bear his debt-burdened cross.

"When the minister unburdens himself of these issues, when he brings the supplementary estimates, let everybody on both sides of the House understand that we are going to help him to carry that burden," Golding said.

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com.

'That (alumina) cap arrangement, including the forward sale at a fixed price, is now costing us more than the Air Jamaica losses. That is how bad it is.'