Foto/ill: Colourbox
Congratulations on a successful 2022!
Dear colleagues. Throughout 2022, we have worked hard on economic measures on various fronts, including land, and this has had a significant effect. Thank you for a solid effort to everyone so that we have managed to stop the increase in our deficit.
As mentioned in the previous newsletter, the financial result for 2022 was better than expected. We ended up with an accumulated deficit of 46.8 million, which is an increase of 2.3 million from the previous year. It may sound strange to congratulate an increase in the deficit, but the truth is that when we prepared the 2022 budget a year ago, it looked like the increase in the deficit was going to be far worse.
We have looked at what is the reason behind the good result. Salary costs have become greater than originally planned, and there are a number of operating costs and teaching costs as well. We have also had some losses related to terminated BOA [externally funded] projects.
But we managed to reduce the cost of uncompleted holidays. And we have an all time high BOA activity of almost 130 million! The last time we had a record was in 2020 and then we managed 120 million. This year we have increased our activity to 129.4 million, compared to 101 million in 2021. Congratulations! It’s a formidable effort! And with higher BOA activity, comes more BOA revenue than we imagined. And that has a positive effect on the bottom line.
We should be incredibly satisfied with our efforts in 2022, which shows that we have the capacity to stop and reverse the negative economic trend. It is still a little early to celebrate, because we still have a way to go to recover the deficit. In the next two weeks, Kristina Havås Hanson, the institute’s controller, and I will work on a budget proposal for 2023. The fact that the deficit we carry from 2022 is less than expect is a good starting point for that work.
Have a nice weekend,
Regards, Julie