Premier Jennifer Smith will take home $100,866 in total income for doing the people's work - $35,599 for being an MP and over $65,000 for being the Premier.

The figure represents a raise of just under $2,000 - but it begins to pale in comparison to the Governor's new salary - $154,680, up from $146,085.

And, while Government's travel expenses are expected to go down by $322,000 next year, it expects to pay out an extra $8 million in civil servants' salaries, according to the Budget released on Friday.

More than half of the close to $600 million budget will go toward the cost of labour on the Government payroll.

The $8 million increase is primarily the result of an across the board pay rise for civil servants and the addition of 126 employees to the payroll, and brings the total estimated bill for salaried workers to $208.3 million. Civil service wage earners, as opposed to salaried employees, are however expected to cost Government $59.4 million - $2.8 million less than last year's figure.

The total bill for civil servants wages and salaries will come to $267.7 million for next year - or roughly 46 percent of estimated current account spending.

Government also plans to spend some $36.8 million on "professional services" or outside consultants. The bill for last year's professional services is expected to come in at close to $44 million - more than $6 million above the original estimate.

An additional $40 million (down by about $500,000 from last year's figure) is slated to be spent on other personnel costs and overheads - $5 million of which is to be spent on training. When those costs are taken into account, the cost of labour is about 58 percent of Government's current account budget of well over half a billion dollars.

In last year's Budget, salaries increased over $10 million and wages increased $3.8 million.

Leading the way in staffing increases is the Education Ministry with 44 extra staff, to total 1,117. The Health Ministry gets an additional 31 as does the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs which has taken over three departments from Human Affairs.

The Ministry of Transport gets an additional ten staff - eight of whom are for the new department of Maritime Administration - bringing its total staffing complement to 475.

Government will be employing a record 4,967 people in the coming fiscal year.

The much contested travel budget is estimated at $4.1 million for the coming year - some $322,000 or 7.3 percent less than last year's estimate of $4.4 million. But Government now expects the travel bill for the current year to be over $4.6 million.