Treasury minister Charles Parkinson outlines the island’s economic situation at yesterday’s Strategic Plan press conference. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 0846057)

THE States is set to spend just over £1.6m. on new services next year.

The States Strategic Plan, which the Assembly will debate next month, earmarks just eight projects – one of them the one-off airport firefighters dispute inquiry – for funding from 60 applications made by governmental departments.

Strategic Plan working party chairman Charles Parkinson said that if expenditure on new service development was to be kept within the limits of efficiency savings identified by the Fundamental Savings Review, then only the most essential initiatives could proceed next year.

‘In the short term, a major objective of the plan must be to enable the States to navigate successfully through the current global economic downturn,’ he said.

While the Strategic Plan was about process, the Policy Council took the decision on bids.

The ‘radical prioritisation’ projects presented to the States for next year must proceed for either legal reasons or to safeguard the island’s international reputation.

Deputy Parkinson said that in essence they were projects that could not be avoided.

Working party deputy chairman Carla McNulty Bauer would not say whether the £200,000 allocation for external relations initiatives in the EC was linked to speculation that the States was to open an office in Brussels.