In a sharp, nuanced assessment of Dominica’s 2025-2026 national budget delivered during parliamentary debate this week, Opposition Leader Jesma Paul-Victor has extended rare public praise to the ruling administration for hitting an almost 98 percent overall implementation rate for the national Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP), while simultaneously calling out deep, problematic disparities in capital budget execution across individual government ministries.
Paul-Victor broke down the official fiscal figures for the debate, noting that the total approved PSIP allocation for the 2025-2026 fiscal cycle came out to roughly 661.66 million Eastern Caribbean dollars. When all revised spending was tallied, actual expenditure landed at approximately 650.24 million Eastern Caribbean dollars, pushing the aggregate implementation rate to 98.3 percent. This strong headline figure, she acknowledged, gives the sitting Cabinet legitimate ground to claim it has delivered on its overarching capital investment commitments to the public.
But the opposition leader emphasized that this impressive aggregate number masks stark unevenness in performance across government departments. While some ministries have executed their capital budgets effectively, she explained, others have spent far less than their approved funding, and two departments actually exceeded their allocated budgets entirely.
These wide gaps, Paul-Victor argued, raise serious red flags around core government functions including long-term project planning, scheduling, public procurement processes, expenditure forecasting, and overall budget discipline. She pushed back against the narrative that high overall spending alone equals strong government performance, noting that meaningful accountability requires consistent, reliable execution across every single ministry.
Digging into the specific underperforming portfolios, Paul-Victor called out particularly low execution rates in four key departments. The Ministry of Tourism, a sector that forms the backbone of Dominica’s national economy, only hit a 35.3 percent execution rate, a result she labeled deeply alarming. The Ministry of Finance clocked in at just 26.2 percent, leaving roughly 10.5 million Eastern Caribbean dollars in planned capital spending unused. The Ministry of Education recorded a 21.7 percent rate, meaning less than one-quarter of all approved capital investment was delivered over the fiscal year. The National Security portfolio posted the lowest performance of all departments named, at just 17.3 percent – leaving more than 82 percent of its allocated investment unimplemented.
Across all government agencies, these variations make clear that systemic improvements are needed in project planning, procurement, financial forecasting, and inter-departmental coordination, Paul-Victor insisted.
Not all ministries received criticism, however. The opposition leader singled out two agencies for strong performance: the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Agriculture. The Prime Minister’s own portfolio hit a 104.3 percent execution rate, which Paul-Victor called an exceptional implementation track record. Expenditure ran 15.3 million Eastern Caribbean dollars over the approved allocation, she noted, a result of major flagship projects moving ahead of schedule and on pace. The Ministry of Agriculture posted a 95.1 percent execution rate, earning praise for its strong financial planning. Paul-Victor noted that the very small gap between its approved allocation and actual spending points to realistic forecasting and effective, consistent project management. The Labour and Public Service Reform portfolio also posted a solid 84.2 percent execution rate, she added.
In closing her assessment, Paul-Victor reiterated that while the current administration can claim a strong overall result for the Public Sector Investment Programme, the wide gap between top and bottom performing ministries cannot be ignored, and requires targeted reform to fix systemic weaknesses in public financial management.