Finance Minister Allan MacMaster announced Friday the deficit forecast has increased $187 million to $654 million on his $16.7 billion budget
Finance and Treasury Board Minister Allan MacMaster arrives at a press conference before tabling the provincial budget at the Nova Scotia legislature in Halifax on Feb. 29.In what’s become a September pattern in Nova Scotia politics, the province’s finance minister is again projecting a bigger deficit than estimated in the spring budget.
The finance minister says he sees “notable” symptoms of a slowing economy, as tax revenues are forecast to be about $70 million less than anticipated in the spring budget. Those symptoms include a $44-million drop in harmonized sales taxes due to a decrease in consumer demand, according to the documents released Friday.
Assumptions in the spring budget on the number of new taxpayers coming on the rolls due to population increase were optimistic. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the province’s population was growing at a rate of 3.5 per cent. But recent figures received by the Finance Department showed a growth rate of 1.88 per cent between July 2023 and July 2024, officials said Friday.
The provincial government has overestimated its deficit by wide margins in recent years and has made a number of spending announcements outside the spring budget process – drawing critiques from the auditor general for public money spent without the same legislative oversight that the budget receives.
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