The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) is projecting a deficit of $546.7 million, a major departure from a budgeted surplus of $469.3 million.
This is according to the Ministry of Finance’s Mid-Year report on the economy.
It said that the projected deficit was mainly due to a shortfall of $1 billion or 4.5 percent in employee contributions, compared to the amount budgeted for at the half-year, as well as an increase of $449.3 million or 1.9 percent in benefit payments. It is unclear where the employee shortfalls are coming from but the NIS also lost a large amount of employee contributions in 2017 and 2018 after thousands of sugar workers were made redundant.