Ministry of Economy, Suva. [File Photo]

The $485 million under-spending by Government in the 2020/2021 Fiscal Year is due to the tight restraint on public expenditure.

This is according to the Ministry of Economy’s Acting Permanent Secretary, Shiri Gounder, who says that this is also the result of an over-collection in Government revenue of $469.4 million.

At the close of FY2020-2021, the government’s total revenue stood at $2,143.0 million whilst total expenditure amounted to $3,189.6 million.

Gounder adds that the net fiscal deficit position stood at $1,046.6 million or 10.9 percent, almost half of the budgeted fiscal deficit of 20.2 percent of GDP.

He says government debt was recorded at around $7,663.7 million, equivalent to 79.8 percent of GDP.

This was $592.7 million lower than the initial projection of $8,256.4 million, or 83.4 percent of GDP.

Gounder says the government under-spending was further supported by the over-collection of $254.7 million in budget support grants from our development partners mainly Australia, New Zealand and the European Union.

The highest under-spending was recorded for interest expenditure due to the lower than expected cost of borrowing in the domestic market and access to concessional debt from external multilateral and bilateral development partners like the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and JICA.