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Caribbean Islands Expenditures
Total government expenditures in 1985 were estimated to have
reached US$823 million or nearly 40 percent of GDP at current
prices. If debt servicing was excluded from expenditures, they
equaled only 22.5 percent of GDP. Current account expenditures
totalled US$591 million or 72 percent of the total; thus, a rather
high percentage of the Jamaican budget was dedicated to recurrent
expenditures. The capital account in 1985 amounted to US$232
million, or 28 percent of total expenditures. More expansionary and
politically oriented budgets in the late 1980s were expected to
increase the capital account's share of the budget to over 30
percent.
The government's current and capital accounts were divided into
general services, social and community services, economic services,
and miscellaneous services. Sixty-one percent of current account
expenditures were devoted to general services; two-thirds of that
total were interest payments, followed by payments for
administrative services, police, defense, justice, and prisons.
Social and community services (comprising education, health, social
security, housing, and water) represented 29.7 percent of current
account expenditures and economic services made up 6.5 percent. The
remaining 2.4 percent consisted of miscellaneous services, all of
which were grants to local government.
The distribution of capital expenditures changed markedly in
the 1980s as compared with previous decades, primarily as a result
of the increasingly unmanageable national debt. Fifty percent of
all capital expenditures in 1985 fell under general services, of
which over 90 percent went to repay the principal of the public
debt and other fiscal services. Economic services accounted for 39
percent of capital expenditures. The largest share of economic
services was destined for industry and commerce, followed by
agriculture, roads, transport and communications, and natural
resource development. Eleven percent of capital expenditures were
devoted to social and community services, primarily for school
facilities, health centers, water systems, and housing. This
pattern of expenditure was in sharp contrast to the situation in
the 1960s and 1970s, when lower debt repayment had allowed the
Jamaican government to emphasize physical infrastructure
development.
Data as of November 1987
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