Mid-year financial update expected Tuesday

It’s unlikely to make as big a splash as the first-quarter update, but the Saskatchewan government is poised to release its financial update for the first half of the fiscal year late Tuesday morning.

The first-quarter report showed a $2-billion swing, mostly thanks to resource revenue. That left the province with a $1.04-billion surplus, a far cry from the $463-million deficit forecast just three months earlier in the spring budget.

That’s what allowed the provincial government to announce $500 cheques to each adult in the province – cheques that are being sent out now – along with pullbacks on the then-planned PST expansion, a continuation of the small business tax rate reduction, and a large paydown of operating debt.

At the time, Finance Minister Donna Harpauer was wary of the extra money, being that it was from resource prices taking a jump.

“We cannot get caught up in the volatility of resource revenues and so we still will have to be very, very, very careful in our spending going forward,” Harpauer said in August.

Harpauer said the government couldn’t assume that prices would stay so high indefinitely, but also didn’t anticipate them dropping and devastating the new budget forecasts.

“Should they, then we’ll make different decisions going forward, but there’s a number of factors creating an extremely high price right now,” said Harpauer.

On Tuesday morning, the mid-year financials will reveal how correct the predictions were and how the government’s experts now believe its coffers will fare for the rest of the year.