Below follows a statement from the Government regarding comments made by Roy Clinton on the Budget surplus:

Mr. Clinton has argued that the surplus this year is artificial. This is not true. The deficit in  Government companies has been covered by an advance from the consolidated fund of £27,644  million pounds.

Mr. Clinton placed on social media the relevant pages of the estimates for the year just ended to show the effect of this transaction. 

This year the surplus of recurrent revenue at £1,908 million is not large enough to make a transfer to the Government companies which the Government has been doing since 2012 and the GSD  has been voting against since 2015. 

In the absence of having a surplus large enough to transfer, which they have been opposing, the  alternative is to use the method they did in Government in the years 2008/09, 2009/10 and  2010/11. 

In each of those three years the surplus in the Government account was smaller than the deficit  in the Government companies and the company deficits were covered by the GSD in exactly the  same way, as an advance from the consolidated funds reserves. This is now being condemned  by the GSD through Mr. Clinton, although it was the GSD Government who introduced the  system. Applying the Clinton argument and calculation to the budgets of 2008/9, 2009/10, 

2010/11 converts the GSD surpluses for each of those three years into deficits as follows. The  calculation done by Mr. Clinton is surplus £1,908m. 2023/2024 advance. (£27,644m) company  deficit £25,736m. 

The pages in this year’s budget book used by Mr. Clinton are the same as the pages the GSD  Government years providing irrefutable proof that all that has been done now, is apply the same method in the estimate book of 2023/2024 as they did in each of the three years 2008/9, 2009/10 and 2010/11. 

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Azzopardi now say this is a maneuver to create a surplus. This is not true. 

It shows they cannot be trusted and are willing to manufacture figure to mislead people when the  facts are evident and irrefutable both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Azzopardi are lying and they both know  they are doing it. GSD Members of Parliament have previously referred to the actions of the GSD  Government up to December 2011 as a “Golden Legacy” for Gibraltar but it seems they want to  “cherry pick” which bits of the legacy they want to remember.