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 7.52% by May 2015 to $1.28B compared to $1.19B in 2014. In fact, public sector wages mainly increased on the back of the jump in allowances 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 31% by May 2014 to 33% by May 2015.
Basic salaries, which owned up to 71.09% of “Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits”, augmented by a 3.55% year on year (y-o-y) to $910.12M in the first 5 months of 2015. This was mainly driven by the respective rises of 4.57% in salaries of “Military personnel” (65.09% of total basic salaries) and 3.57% in Salaries of “Civil Personnel” (10.57% of total salaries), totaling $592.37M and $96.19M. Furthermore, a slight 0.91% uptick to $221.56M in salaries for “Education Personnel” (24.34% of total salaries) was recorded.
“Allowances” surged yearly from $181.09M to $242.79M by May mainly due to the 33.95% increase in allowances for the “military personnel” to $240.80M.
In contrast, “Indemnities” went down by 1.11% annually to $59.70M, over the same period.
Breakdown of Basic Salaries and Total Public Sector Wages by May ($M)
| Basic Salaries | Total | |||
| 2014 | 2015 | 2014 | 2015 | |
| Military Personnel | 566.50 | 592.37 | 768.82 | 857.05 |
| Army | 357.55 | 376.78 | 464.34 | 540.63 |
| Internal Security Forces | 163.85 | 164.51 | 236.15 | 242.12 |
| General Security Forces | 35.16 | 39.80 | 53.07 | 57.05 |
| State Security Forces | 9.95 | 10.61 | 15.92 | 17.25 |
| Education Personnel | 219.57 | 221.56 | 242.79 | 238.14 |
| Civil Personnel , of which | 92.87 | 96.19 | 126.70 | 130.68 |
| Employees Cooperative | – | – | 42.45 | 44.44 |
| Customs Salaries | – | – | 9.95 | 9.95 |
| Total | 878.94 | 910.12 | 1190.71 | 1280.27 |
Source: MoF