Zero-based budgeting has been expanded to nine Government Ministries, Finance Minister Eugene Cox revealed at last week's press conference on the Budget Statement.

And the Budget also shows departmental results against output targets, allowing the public to measure performance on a year by year basis for the first time.

Officials say zero-based budgeting approach, designed to cut out financial fluff while establishing greater accountability, could minimise the need for supplementary budget requests.

Five Government departments went through the process last year in preparing the country's budget for the current fiscal year - Education, Tourism, the Tax Commissioner's Office, Youth and Sport and the Regiment.

Mr. Cox had indicated then that the approach will be extended to all Government department for the 2003/04 Budget.

But just four additional departments, the Police, Airport Operations, the Public Transportation Board and the Health Ministry were included this time around. The process essentially requires that the budget estimators start from a blank piece of paper - instead of the previous year's budget - and focus on what is actually needed for the coming year making it easier to avoid unnecessary spending and achieve a more efficient use of funds.

And it increases accountability with performance targets built into the process.

"We are rolling this out over a five-year period. What we attempted to do this year is pinpoint the departments that require a lot of resources. The nine departments represent 40 percent of Government expenditure," said Financial Secretary Donald Scott.

"What you want to be able to do is do a budgeting process which fairly efficiently tells you the level of resources required to provide a service. We've found that once the entire organisation uses the same approach for budgeting there is the potential for 20 percent in savings and yielding a higher level of service for the same amount of resources. In other words, the savings have been identified but they have been 'reinvested'."

In the last Budget, money for Tourism was reduced by 5.3 percent or $2 million, as a direct result of zero-based budgeting, Government said then.

Government expects that Tourism's spending by the end of the fiscal year will be just within its $35.57 million budget.

And it has added just $350,000 for the coming financial year. Last year the process freed up $1.7 million in the Education Ministry's budget which was redirected to the department's school improvement programme, the 'Teachers as Scholars' programme and its project to introduce teacher licensing.

This year, Education gets the second biggest boost (11 percent) to its budget with an additional $10.4 million - new money which provides for the new special school, extra funding for staff development, counselling services, the summer programme and other "essential elements of education".

In terms of performance measures, some departments reported mixed results. (See below)