Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s par­tial pay­ment of back­pay to pub­lic ser­vants, em­pha­sis­ing that it was ex­e­cut­ed re­spon­si­bly—with­out bor­row­ing or tap­ping in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF). He said this was done de­spite the se­vere eco­nom­ic chal­lenges in­her­it­ed from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said the pay­ment fol­lowed in­ten­sive ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), cul­mi­nat­ing in an agree­ment that al­lowed for a par­tial set­tle­ment of ar­rears ahead of Christ­mas.

He not­ed that once ne­go­ti­a­tions were con­clud­ed, the Gov­ern­ment faced the im­me­di­ate chal­lenge of iden­ti­fy­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to ho­n­our the agree­ment with­in a mat­ter of days.