Public Sector Wages Expanded to $1.04B by April 2015

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 13.07% by April 2015 to $1.04B compared to $924.46M in 2014. In fact, public sector wages mainly increased on the back of allowances to the public sector in addition to a progression in basic salaries.

Salaries and wages, which constitute the largest component of the government primary expenditures, saw its share rise from 30% by April 2014 to 32% by April 2015.

Basic salaries, which owned up to 70.54% of “Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits”, augmented by 4.12% year on year (y-o-y) to $736.98M in the first 4 months of 2015. This was mainly driven by the respective rises of 4.68% in salaries of “Military personnel” (64.36% of total basic salaries) and 7.14% in Salaries of “Civil Personnel” (10.80% of total salaries), totaling $474.30M and $79.60M. Furthermore, salaries for “Education Personnel” (24.84% of total salaries) illustrated a minor 1.47% up tick to $183.08M

“Allowances” surged yearly from $120.07M to $194.36M by April mainly due to the increase, close to double, in allowances for the “military personnel” to $193.03M.

“Indemnities” merely declined by 1.37% annually to $47.76M, over the same period.

Breakdown of Basic Salaries and Total Public Sector Wages by April ($M)

Source: MoF