Gathered in plenary session on October 30 and 31, the elected representatives of the Assembly of Martinique notably debated the budgetary orientations for 2025. A debate whose objective is to shed light on the budgetary choices on which the Assembly will decide during the vote on the Primary Budget next December. A future budget which could be characterized by financial restrictions.
In its communication, the CTM executive underlines the connection between the decline in state allocations and the financial weight of an increasingly worrying situation of social precariousness in Martinique.
With 27.4% of its population living below the poverty line, approximately twice as much as in mainland France, Martinique assumes a much higher level of social spending than that of national authorities. Thus social allowances including the Personalized Autonomy Allowance (APA), the Disability Compensation Benefit (PCH) and the Active Solidarity Income (RSA) weigh more and more heavily on the CTM budget (a third of the operating budget of the CTM in 2023) due to the increase in the number of beneficiaries and the reduction in the share reimbursed by the State.
Territorial Collectivity of Martinique
For the executive, moreover, certain announcements contained in the Finance Bill (PLF) for 2025 will lead it to have to make savings.
The measures announced as part of the PLF 2025 (5 billion euros in savings for local authorities) will seriously affect the CTM's budget (-15 million), forcing it to implement a plan to rationalize spending to preserve its capacity to act, particularly among the most vulnerable.
Territorial Collectivity of Martinique
A declared desire which should notably involve a “reassessment of CTM framework intervention mechanisms within the framework of a dialogue reinforced“with its partners. Or even by setting up a “general regulations for subsidies to public and private persons“.
“Taking into account the projection of actual operating revenues”continues the executive, “lThe savings that must be made by the CTM must reach between now and 2028-2029, between €120 million and €130 million compared to 2023.” As a reminder, the operating revenue of a local authority comes in particular from taxation, grants/subsidies and borrowing.
For the 2025 financial year, adds the CTM, “budgetary and financial balance could, at this stage, be achieved with real operating expenses equal to at most €980 million.” The operating expenses of a community concern expenses relating to personnel (salaries) and expenses of a general nature (expenses related to energy, water, various purchases, etc.).
A projection of budgetary and financial balance which, for the moment, seems difficult to achieve. ''It is important to remember that compulsory expenditure for 2025 is already estimated at more than €1,102 million and therefore higher than all estimated real operating revenue'', continues the executive.
Finally, the actual operating revenues announced by the CTM in its forecasts for 2025 are 1,061,000,000 billion euros. And the operating expenses announced, including mandatory expenses, of 1,101,845,000 billion euros. That is a gap between revenue and expenditure of 40,845,000 million euros.
REPLAY. Budgetary orientation on the agenda of the monthly plenary of the Assembly of Martinique
