According to the Ministry of Finance (MoF), “Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits”, which mainly include the cost of basic salaries, allowances and indemnities paid to employees of the public sector, expanded by 12.44% by February 2015 to $497.51M compared to $442.45M in 2014. In fact, public sector wages mainly increased on the back of allowances to the public sector rather than an increase in basic salaries.
Salaries and wages, which constitute the largest component of the government primary expenditures, saw its share rise from 29% by February 2014 to 35% by February 2015.
Basic salaries, which owned up to 71.33% of “Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits”, augmented by a small 0.75% year on year (y-o-y) to $354.89M in the first 2 months of 2015. This was mainly driven by the respective rises of 3.47% in salaries of “Military personnel” (66.92% of total basic salaries) and 1.27% in Salaries of “Civil Personnel” (11.40% of total salaries), totaling $237.48M and $40.46M. However, it was partly offset by the 9.37% decrease in salaries for “Education Personnel” (21.68% of total salaries) to $77M.
“Allowances” surged yearly from $48.42M to $103.48M by February mainly due to the increase, by more than double, in allowances for the “military personnel” to $102.82M. “Indemnities” also went up by 6.06% annually to $23.22M, over the same period.
Breakdown of Basic Salaries and Total Public Sector Wages by February ($M)
| Basic Salaries | Total | |||
| 2014 | 2015 | 2014 | 2015 | |
| Military Personnel | 229.52 | 237.48 | 287.23 | 349.59 |
| Army | 142.62 | 150.58 | 166.50 | 236.15 |
| Internal Security Forces | 67.66 | 67.00 | 92.87 | 85.57 |
| General Security Forces | 15.26 | 15.92 | 22.55 | 22.55 |
| State Security Forces | 3.98 | 4.64 | 5.31 | 5.97 |
| Education Personnel | 84.91 | 76.95 | 92.21 | 84.25 |
| Civil Personnel , of which | 37.15 | 40.46 | 49.75 | 53.07 |
| Employees Cooperative | – | – | 9.29 | 6.63 |
| Customs Salaries | – | – | 3.98 | 3.98 |
| Total | 352.24 | 354.89 | 442.45 | 497.51 |
Source:MoF