The post-pandemic economic recovery and the war in Ukraine, which caused the price of a barrel of oil to jump, are smiling on Alberta, which expects to rack up a budget surplus 25 times larger than expected.
“Based on our first quarter and current fiscal year projections, we will not have a surplus of $515 million as we originally projected in the budget in February, but rather a surplus of 13, $2 billion,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney enthused in a video posted Tuesday evening.
“Of course, a lot of this is due to the growth in property prices and royalties,” Mr. Kenney continued.
For an order of magnitude, the budget adopted by the Alberta government last winter provided for a total of $59.4 billion in expenditures, in addition to $2.8 billion to recover from COVID-19 and deal with possible disasters.
By way of comparison, the 2020-2021 fiscal year, marked by the arrival of the pandemic and the collapse in the price of oil, ended with a shortfall of $17 billion for the Alberta government.
The resigning Premier, who will soon hand over the reins of the province to the next leader of the United Conservative Party – the results of the leadership race are expected on October 6 – praised his budgetary rigor to explain the good fiscal performance of the Alberta.
“Fundamentally, we wouldn’t have a balanced budget this year if we hadn’t regained control of spending and growth in the economy,” Kenney said.
Consequently, the Alberta government will reinstate its tax indexing system, which should allow taxpayers to receive approximately $300, on average, at the end of the fiscal year. This measure will cost the government about $300 million, said Jason Kenney.