Total general revenues for the first quarter of fiscal year 2005 totaled $47.3 million\u2014about 10 percent higher compared with the same period last year.<\/p>\n
Department of Finance data showed that from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2004, it collected $39.9 million in taxes and $7.4 million in fees, services and other revenues.<\/p>\n
During the same period in FY 2004, the government collected just $43.1 million\u2014$37.5 million from taxes and $5.5 million from fees and other revenues.<\/p>\n
High collection growth percentage in the first three months of FY 2005 were recorded for beautification tax at $655,000, or 23 percent up compared with FY 2004; hotel tax at $1.3 million, or 20 percent up; business gross revenue taxes at $12.5 million, or 18.80 percent up; and liquid fuel tax at $947,000, or 12.7 percent up.<\/p>\n
In fees, the government registered increased percentage collection rate in \u201cother revenues\u201d totaling $518,000\u201479 percent up compared with the same period last fiscal year; and amusement machine licenses at $2.3 million, an increase of 44.6 percent.<\/p>\n
Total operating resources for the first three months of the fiscal year totaled $49.5 million or over 10 percent more than the same period last fiscal year.<\/p>\n
Minus a $1.905 million bond payment, the government\u2019s total general appropriation for the first three months amounted to $47.6 million or about $5 million more than the same period in FY 2004.<\/p>\n
Meantime, Gov. Juan N. Babauta has insisted that his FY 2004 revenue projections were accurate, noting that the shortfall was a mere .07 percent\u2014not 7 percent as \u201cinaccurately reported in the press.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is 7\/100 of a percent,\u201d he said, maintaining that in FY2004, \u201cwe have once again succeeded in keeping expenditures in line with revenues and balanced budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand how to control spending and we have a reliable record of forecasting revenues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that a balanced budget means that revenues received are at least equal to expenditures made in any given year.<\/p>\n
He said that while the budget \u201chas been balanced in the last two years,\u201d the Commonwealth does have some $100 million debt accumulated since 1978.<\/p>\n
The governor noted that the 2005 appropriation bill, House Bill 14-250, takes a step back in addressing the debt problem as it only set aside 1 percent\u2014not 2 percent\u2014of the budget to pay off the debt.<\/p>\n
DoF data showed that the government had projected to generate $218.098 million for FY 2004; actual revenues only totaled $203.231 million.<\/p>\n
The government collected only $168.3 million in total taxes in FY 2004; it had expected $187.4 million.<\/p>\n
For fees, services, and other revenues, the government got $34.9 million, which is 13 percent higher than the estimated revenues for the period.<\/p>\n
Finance Secretary Fermin Atalig said that the actual shortfall for total operating funds for FY 2004 was only less than 1 percent.<\/p>\n
He said that of the general appropriation of $213.9 million\u2014the sum of $226.1 million total operating resources minus $12.2 million bond payment\u2014the actual revenues during the period reached $213.8 million.<\/p>\n
The Finance chief projects that the government would be getting $20 million in additional revenues in FY2005 compared with FY 2004.<\/p>\n
The Finance official said that based on the trend during the first two months of FY 2005, the government would realize $5 million in additional revenues every quarter.<\/p>\n
The governor, who asked the Legislature for $226 million as its budget for FY 2005, vetoed last week the $217.7 million that the Legislature had approved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Total general revenues for the first quarter of fiscal year 2005 totaled $47.3 million\u2014about 10 percent higher compared with the same period last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}