Minister of Economic Affairs, Sen. Hon. Michael appeared at a press briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister on Friday where he addressed preparations for the mid year budget set for February 21st.
Halkitis said preparations are in full stride. “Meetings with the various ministries and agencies to access their progress so far for the first half of the year and plan for the second half of the year and make any necessary adjustments that we see given changes in priorities and developments for the first half of the year. Generally, we’re positive, we’re generally on track. I know there was some commentary about a so called bad first quarter, there’s four quarters to a financial year and we fully expect to be within the range of meeting our target when we look to the full year. Because we know that this the second half of the year is generally the time when the government revenues perform the best.”
The Minister also outlined some of the measures taken to bring economic relief. He said, “we have done, as far as we could with the tools available to the government, in terms of reduction in duties on things like building materials and food. We’ve done a lot of that. We continue to see where we can even go, I mean, a lot of it is zero. We are some research being done on the whole supply chain to how if there’s any sort of government intervention that can bring some savings in that way. We had said before that we will address the issue of the impact of the changes in the boat registration for particularly those small boat owners and those in the family islands so you will see that correction being made. And normally at the mid year you don’t see a lot of measures.”
