“Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits” Expanded to $2.99B in 2014

According to the Ministry of Finance (MoF), “Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits”, which mainly includes the cost of basic salaries, allowances and indemnities, increased by 5.26% in the year of 2014 to $2.99B compared to $2.84B in 2013. Salaries and wages, which constitute the largest component of the government primary expenditure, saw its share rise from 29% in December 2013 to 31% by December 2014.

Basic salaries, which owned up to 73.14% of “Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits”, increased by 3.69% years on year (y-o-y) to $2.18B throughout 2014. This was mainly driven by the respective rises of 5.91% in salaries of “Military personnel” (6.15% of total salaries) and 1.27% “Education Personnel” (26.55% of total salaries), totaling $1.38B and $579.77M. However, it was partly offset by the 2.86% decrease in salaries for “Civil Personnel” (10.30% of total salaries) to $224.88M.

On the other hand, “Allowances” and “Indemnities” dropped by 3.10% and 5.29% to $372.80M and $139.30M, respectively. The former downturned because of the 3.30% decline in allowances for the “military personnel”, while the latter shrunk due to the 14.47% decline in indemnities for “Education Personnel” during 2014. Indemnities’ decline was partly due to the teachers’ protests in April of last year leading to the Ministry of Education cancelling all public examinations such as the Baccalaureate and Brevet.

Breakdown of Basic Salaries and Total Public Sector Wages

Source: MoF