American Samoa's government departments and agencies have been instructed to stick to their budget ceilings for 2007 when they prepare their budgets for the fiscal year 2008.
The new fiscal year begins October 1st and the budget bill is to be submitted to the Legislature during the next Fono session in July.
Budget Director, Magalei Logovii, has set a June 22 deadline for all departments to submit their budget requests.
He says due to the instability of revenue collections for the current fiscal year, that they must restrict their budget requests to fiscal year 2007 levels.
The Budget director spelled out that for locally funded departments there will be no new positions allowed and all vacant positions will be eliminated.
For federal grants, Magalei asked departments to prepare their budgets according to the approved federal grants.
The government's budget for 2007 was 288.5 million US dollars.
