2.5% salary hike introduced for public servants in SVG: 2025 Budget

A 2.5 percent hike in the salary of the public servants in St Vincent and the Grenadines has been introduced. As per the EC$1.85 billion 2025 budget, no new taxes or fees were introduced by the government, leading to the increase in salaries.

The move is part of the government’s agreement with the Labour Movement where they promised to hike their salaries three times over a period of three years. It is added into the 2025 budget again as St Vincent and the Grenadines increased the salaries of the public servants by 2.5 percent years in 2023 and by two percent in 2024. 

Now, in the third year, the promise will be completed by increasing the salaries again by 2.5 percent. The Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Information Technology presented the budget in the parliament and announced the new provisions of new fiscal strategies. 

Budget Allocation

Aiming to increase salaries, the budget 2025 featured an allocation of an extra $25.6 million for the sector of the compensation of employees. This has marked the hike of 6.6 percent in the wage bill of the government. 

In addition to that, the proposal for a fresh salary enhancement package will also be given consideration in 2026 as per the discussion with the Labour Movement last year. Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves added that they will meet the union leaders and discuss further possibilities and parameters about their salary packages and other requirements later this year.

As per the early estimates, the 2025 budget featured a hike of $235 million in the budget compared to the budget of $1.6 billion in 2024. The hike is likely to be attributed to different sectors such as response and recovery against the natural calamities, reconstruction projects after Hurricane Beryl. 

This has marked a hike of 14.4 percent, highlighting that the wage bill will also be increased by 5.4 percent in 2025. PM Gonsalves added that the budget is aimed at catering to the demand of the rebuilding and reconstruction of the infrastructure that are harshly impacted by Hurricane Beryl.