THE NORTHERN Ireland Executive will receive an additional £14.3 million (€17.2 million) to spend as a result of the UK chancellor’s latest budget, but the North’s sceptical Finance Minister has warned that other measures unveiled by George Osborne could negate the funding boost.

Sammy Wilson welcomed initiatives aimed at supporting local economic recovery, including a £13.7 million investment to enable ultra-fast broadband in Belfast and further tax credits for high-end television production in the North.

But he warned that the chancellor’s proposals to regionalise public sector pay could have a much more negative impact in Northern Ireland than in other parts of the UK. Public sector pay in the North is about 3.5 per cent below the UK average.

“I am also outraged that the chancellor has not done more to provide assistance to those on low incomes and bring families out of poverty, including a reduction in fuel duty,” Mr Wilson said.

Moves by Mr Osborne in his budget to cut the top tax rate for people who earn more than £150,000 and impose a new 7 per cent stamp duty rate for houses with a price tag of £2 million will have little impact in the North.

But the chancellor’s decision to raise the level at which workers start to pay tax in the UK to £9,205 means 25,000 people in the North will no longer have to pay income tax and will also deliver a lower tax bill for an estimated 605,000 people from next April.

Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the UK treasury, said changes to personal taxation and a 1 per cent reduction in the rate of UK corporation tax, which will fall to 24 per cent this year and subsequently 22 per cent by April 2014, were among a range of measures that could help to “drive growth and rebalance the economy” in the North.

The UK treasury has also highlighted initiatives such as investment in mobile infrastructure to deliver improved coverage, including on the A2 between Derry and Newry and the A29 between Coleraine and Armagh.

Mervyn McCall, chairman of the Institute of Directors, Northern Ireland Division, said while it welcomed the chancellor’s commitment to “back business”, the proposed cut in corporation tax was “largely irrelevant for Northern Ireland companies that compete directly with the Republic on a rate of almost half”.