The most prominent figures of the new PLD administration held their first genuine policy meeting yesterday and spent over four hours debating various hot topics facing the country. Today?s headlines provide a summary of the discussions, whose subject matter included a 20% reduction in the public payroll, meaning 68,000 fewer government jobs; the IMF?s stance against providing any subsidies for propane and electricity; the stalled status of many important projects due to lack of counterpart funding; and the government?s decision to honor RD$41.373 billion in debts, including RD$20.128 billion to service the foreign debt, RD$3.714 billion in overdue propane subsidies, RD$5.840 billion for the electric sector and payroll expenses of RD$11.683 billion. The meeting focused on financial forecasts that said government income for the four remaining months of fiscal 2004 would reach just RD$40.420 billion. The President named four groups of cabinet officials to follow through on the various governmental decisions. President Fernandez emphasized the need for a rigorous application of each and every measure taken by his administration, and said that a first step would be to downsize the government payroll by 20%. Fernandez also gave instructions to revise the foreign debt accumulated in the period from 2000 to 2004. He called for a complete review of intra-governmental fund transfers, which he seeks to reduce by 30%. Another chief point was the process whereby the Customs Office deposits the money collected by the foreign currency exchange commission. These funds are directly deposited into the accounts designated for payment of foreign debts and an investigation of the use given to those funds, which were detoured for several months by the previous administration, is being called for.