The APNU has a serious math problem

The chart below shows that the APNU granted a cumulative increase in salaries of 77%. However, from their own data as shown in the chart below, the arithmetic is incorrect. If you add the percentage increases that they claimed was granted in 2015 of 26%, 10% (2016), 9% (2017), 7% (2018) and 9% (2019), you will get 61% and not 77%. So this is error # 1.

The second error is, if one were to fact check the data against the budget estimates for the years 2014 and 2015, you will find that total employment cost in 2014 was $42.1 billion, which increased to $44.8 billion in 2015. Resultantly, the year over year increase would work out to 6% and not 26% as per the chart below. Now, let’s adjust the cumulative increase to account for these two mathematical corrections, the cumulative increase would be 6% (2015) + 10% (2016) + 9% (2017) + 7% 2018 + 9% (2019) = 41%.

Now, let’s contrast this with the cumulative increases by the incumbent for the period 2021 – 2023. You would recall that the government had adjusted various categories of public servants salaries for anomalies. Those adjustments were upward adjustments, which were as follows:

– The average upward adjustment for the Disciplined services was 33.4%,
– The average upward adjustment for the health sector was 69.5%,
– The average upward adjustment for the Teachers was 35.5%,
– The average across all the various categories was therefore 46.1%.

Additionally, the across the board increase for the period 2021-2023 amounted to 21.5%. So if we add the two (average across the various categories of 46.1% and the across the board increase of 21.5%), the total cumulative increase for this period is 67.6%.

With the above in mind, now we can correctly compare and contrast the cumulative salary increases by the two Administrations: The APNU+AFC for the period 2015-2019 (5 years) granted a cumulative increase of 41%, whereas the incumbent has granted a cumulative increase in wages and salaries of 67.6% for the period 2021-2023 (3 years).

In other words, the increase the APNU Govt gave in 5 years, the incumbent government gave nearly twice (1.6x) as much in just 3 years.