$1B in Budget — PSA part arrears; Divali Nagar nixed

The pace at which scruti­ny of the 2027 Bud­get de­tails pro­ceed­ed in Par­lia­ment dur­ing the week was pun­ish­ing - not on­ly re­gard­ing speed, but al­so sec­tors and per­son­al­i­ties in and out of the Red House.

The week’s ex­am­i­na­tion by Op­po­si­tion MPs of min­istries’ ex­pen­di­ture in Bud­get re­ports, con­firmed a de­cline - seen in re­duced ex­pen­di­ture fund­ing for var­i­ous di­vi­sions.

The 2027 Bud­get ($63.36 bil­lion), big­ger than the 2026 pack­age ($59.232B), saw a large part of the ap­prox­i­mate $4B in­crease go­ing to­wards pub­lic ser­vants’ in­creased salaries fol­low­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) de­liv­ery. It’s con­firmed that a sub­stan­tial $1b-plus al­lo­ca­tion in the es­ti­mates of ex­pen­di­ture is part of the ar­rears to the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) - ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent. The union and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer have to de­ter­mine the com­po­si­tion of ar­rears.