Isle of Man Government spending is now at its highest level, outside of the years disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nominal terms

In nominal terms, Isle of Man Government expenditure has risen every year since 2015-16 (except for the 2022-23 financial year, as the extraordinary spending during the Covid period expired).

In 2015-16, the Isle of Man Government spent approximately £933 million, which increased to £1,270 million in the 2023-24 financial year – an increase of 36% over this period.

The blue column represents government “income” and the red column represents government expenditure. The Isle of Man Government “income” column includes transfers from savings and reserves. No house hold or business could consider money taken from savings as “income”, but the Isle of Man Government considers such money to be “income”.

Real terms

During this time period, there has been significant inflation. Using information from the Bank of England, the financial records have been deflated to convert the expenditure into real prices. This allows a fairer comparison, using the consistent value of March 2024 British Pounds.

Isle of Man Government figures show that the 2023-24 financial year was the highest-spending year in recent Manx history, save for the three Covid-affected years of 2019-2022.

Further, this confirms that even after accounting for inflation, government expenditure rose by almost 6% last year.

Sources

The source for this analysis was the Isle of Man Government Budget papers, available from the Isle of Man Government. The ‘probable’ expenditure numbers were used for each concluded year.

Inflation figures were provided by the Bank of England inflation calculator.

Access to the underlying spreadsheet and calculations is available on request.