There's a very tight link between the job market and the new money ministers and premiers want from the federal treasury.

Equalization payments do not involve wealthy provinces making direct payments to poor provinces as the money comes from the federal treasury.

Without funds, he took the daring step of issuing $375,000 in drafts on the federal treasury, with the expectation that the federal government would honor them later.

Cotton acreage plunged from 120,000 acres in 1997 to only 40,000 acres in 2005, even as the federal treasury gave the state's farmers over $678 million in cotton subsidies.

Will this cost the provincial and federal treasuries?

The municipal government consists of a municipal president, a treasury official and 12 community representatives called regidors.

Treasury officials also questioned how much of the traffic would be business-related - as if leisure and holiday traffic somehow had no value.

Treasury officials last night admitted any attempt to rip-up bankers' contracts to stop them getting the cash would end up in court.

Treasury officials insisted last night that these proposals would be open for consultation.

Treasury officials, running through their numbers, have decided that we are in a different world from that of the past two decades.