Cautious optimism expressed during financial update
Posted Aug 29, 2013 11:52 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Alberta’s finance minister has tabled the numbers from the first three months of the 2013/2014 fiscal year.
Dour Horner says so far from the $1 billion the goverment has allocated to flood recovery costs, they have only doled out $148 Million.
The province estimates the final damage tab from the flood will come in around $5 Billion, with Albertans’ already filing $1.6 Billion in insurance claims.
Horner says the rebuild following the flood will actually increase Alberta’s gross domestic product numbers this year, but on the downside it will also drive up the cost of building materials and labour.
He says a reduction in the so called bitumen bubble, which is the price gap between world oil prices and what Alberta gets for it’s crude also helped improve goverment revenues in the first quarter.
Horner says the goverment is committed to living within it’s means, and with nine months to go before the end of the current fiscal year, the province could end up with a Surplus as high as $250 Million or a deficit of $500 Million, adding only time will tell.
