ECONOMY Minister and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said this year would be the first time for the Government to borrow money to pay for operating expenditure.
During a 2021-2022 national budget virtual consultation last Sunday, he said right now the Government debt was about $6.875 billion, and “this was equivalent to 69.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of January 2021”.
“Whenever you look at debt, you should always look at that as to why are we borrowing money,” he said.
“Are we borrowing money to basically, you know, build things that are going to be no use to us, are we borrowing money to spend on operating expenditure?
“In other words, are we borrowing money just to pay for government expenses and civil service pay, etcetera?
“We have not done that, at least I can say so, you know, for the past 15 years we have not done so, at least since 2017.
“We have not borrowed money to pay for operating expenditure, but we, in fact, we had a surplus from our operating less our revenue.
“So, but this year for the first time, we are actually borrowing to pay for operating expenditure because we have less revenue and our economy’s contracted.”
