COMMENT | The main trouble with our budget is that 73 percent of it goes to pay government operating expenditure (OE). This includes debt servicing (paying debts of previous years), which is 12.1 percent of the total budget.

The cost of paying salaries and emoluments for the government machinery and apparatus is getting more and more expensive as the burden to employ them all rests entirely with the government, rather than being outsourced.

Questions to ask:

Do we have an efficient civil service within the government? No.

Do we have effective government machinery? No.

That being the case, it also simply means that the basic budget templates have not changed much over the years...