El Caribe reports that the Mej?a government increased its payroll spending by 21.6% during the first four months of this year. The government has not heeded calls that it curtail its spending and economic analysts say that most of the checks added to the payroll represent political patronage.
El Caribe reports that government expenditures on its payroll from January to April totaled RD$7.66 billion, or RD$1.36 billion more than what it spent during the same period last year.
These figures contradict the Pact for Sustainable Economic Development, signed by the Mej?a administration in December 2000 and by which it committed to reduce its payroll to the levels of August 2000.
According to El Caribe, at the start of the current administration in September 2000 government employees numbered 330,568, of which 260,044 were employed in centralized government institutions. As of December of last year, however, the central government had 378,498 employees, of which 303,275 were employed in central government departments.
Jose Lois Malkum, the current governor of the Central Bank, said last year that the government would be better off eliminating 125,000 employees. Malkum says that the number of government employees is actually much more than what is shown on the official books, as these figures refer exclusively to the formal payroll, and not what he calls the ?little payrolls?, which are parallel payrolls handed out at the discretion of government departments heads. These allotments do not appear in the monthly statements of the National Budget Office.