Finance

Finance Minister Highlights Government's Commitment to Fiscal Management in Proposed Budget

The Government plans to allocate $1.26 trillion for the 2025-2026 financial year, which is $126 billion (or 9.1%) lower than the revised Budget of $1.38 trillion from the previous year. Adjusting for the 5% inflation rate up until December, the real value of the Budget is approximately 14% less than the previous year.

Fayval Williams, the Minister of Finance and the Public Service, presented the 2025-2026 Estimates of Expenditure to Parliament yesterday. She revealed that nearly $1.1 trillion of the Budget will be funded through taxes and other revenue sources, while approximately $158.44 billion will be covered by loans to fill the gap.

A significant portion of the spending, nearly $1.20 trillion, will be allocated to recurrent or day-to-day expenses. This year’s recurrent expenditure is $127 billion lower than the corresponding expenditure from the previous financial year.

TECH

John Naughton: AI Roundheads Could Outmatch Tech Royalty in Future Conflict

A memorable scene from the 1967 film The Graduate comes to mind. At a party celebrating his graduation, Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) is approached by Mr. McGuire, an elderly man who insists on sharing “just one word” with him: “plastics.” When Benjamin asks for clarification, McGuire tells him, “There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it.”

Listening to the spending plans of the tech giants—Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta—last week, one might wonder if a similar moment occurred for them during their own graduation celebrations. However, in their case, the magic word would likely have been “AI.”

How else could one explain the fact that these four companies, which reported a combined capital expenditure of $246 billion in 2024 (up from $151 billion in 2023), now plan to spend more than $320 billion this year on AI—a technology for which there is no proven business model that could realistically generate a reasonable return on such a massive investment?

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CRYPTO

Weiss Crypto Issues Urgent Warning on XRP

Weiss Crypto, a division of the financial rating agency Weiss Crypto, has dampened enthusiasm surrounding the Ripple-associated XRP cryptocurrency. The agency argues that "a favorable regulatory shift" doesn’t necessarily establish a strong use case for the token. As reported by U.Today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has recently acknowledged several XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposals, which could mark a pivotal moment for the token. This recognition may lead to greater institutional acceptance in the near future, with the likelihood of an XRP ETF being approved in 2025 now approaching 80%.