The North's finance minister has warned that spending projections for the Assembly's 10 departments in future budgets will not match the expenditure levels set out for the next two years.
Mr Mark Durkan has said that projections for 2003-2004 are "not spending cuts" but a reflection of the Assembly's determination to look at which programmes need the resources most in the future.
Mr Durkan has confided that some reductions would be required and has pointed out that the North must get used to the idea of spending plans going down as well as up.
His cautionary note reflects the fact that the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has no tax raising powers, faces a massive funding challenge.
Mr Durkan billed himself as a "minister in favour of public services" but the task of meeting the rising cost of public service provision in the North was one that he would now pass to his successor.
In addition, Northern Ireland also has to deal with a huge infrastructure deficit, estimated at between £6 billion (€9.6 billion) to £7 billion sterling to be made up over the next 10 years.
According to Mr Stephen Kingon from PricewaterhouseCoopers the Assembly cannot fund this gap within existing resources and he believes services and jobs could suffer as a result.
Mr Kingon believes Northern Ireland must shift from being a public sector dominated economy to one that is knowledge-based and private sector-led.
Meanwhile, business representatives said the 2002-2003 revised budget would help boost the North's economy by delivering extra cash to the public expenditure programme.
Mr Kingon said the increased outlay in health was also important in the light of lower-than-anticipated economic growth.
Mr Kingon believes Mr Durkan, allocated his resources in line with priorities already identified by the Northern Ireland Executive.
The Confederation of British Industry in the North welcomed Mr Durkan's social spending commitments. However, it warned that the Northern Ireland Assembly's draft Programme for Government must be improved if the effectiveness of public expenditure was to be maximised in the North.
Mr Wilfred Mitchell, Northern Ireland policy chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said he would have expected the budget of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment to have been increased to ensure it was equipped to deal with the effects of the global slowdown.
