Yukon posts $55M surplus as 2022 comes to a close
CBC
The Yukon will be heading into the new year with a surplus.
That's one of the takeaways from the latest economic update from the territorial government.
The territorial government finds itself $55.1 million in the black, up $12.7 million from last year's surplus. The surplus is calculated with the difference between the government's total revenue and its total expenses.
"All of these indicators are pixels in a picture," Scott Thompson, Yukon's deputy minister of finance, told MLAs in the Legislature Wednesday as they reviewed audited financial statements.
"We provide as many different pieces as we do to give you different aspects of the economy and how we're interacting with it."
A reason for the surplus, according to the documents, is "higher than expected" transfer payments from the federal government.
The documents note that more than 80 per cent of the Yukon's revenue comes from the federal government, showing "a reliance on the federal government to finance the government's activities."
Questions came up about whether this puts the territory in a risky financial position, but, according to Thompson, that isn't the case for the Yukon.
"The [payments] are designed to provide Yukon residents a range of public services comparable to those offered by provincial governments at a comparable level of taxation," Thompson said.
"In our view, the transfers are both safe and predictable."
The rest of the territory's profits come from taxes and "government business enterprises" like the Yukon Energy Corporation.
Auditors also determined the health of the economy by liquidity ratio: the amount of money the government has to pay off any existing debt. The audit found the government has $1.45 for every dollar it's spent — enough to almost pay off twice its debt of $216.4 million.
Another one of the key financial health indicators in the audit is the Yukon's net debt to GDP ratio, which measures how much money there is for future investments.
Compared to the rest of the country, only the Yukon and Nunavut had more money saved than spent.
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