General Cost of Government (White Giant)

I am president of "The Republic of Osea" on White Giant, and I have played on and off with simcountry for a while, but I plan on continuously playing this time. My problem is that my General Cost of Government has increased by around 500m in the last two game months, and I see no way to lower this.

Its happened for the third month in a row, no one has any advice?

This is the cost of the government facilities and administration. It also includes the cost of local government and the police. The cost of government depends on the size of the economy and the population. Rich countries have more money to spend on government services, peaceful countries that are not burdened by the cost of defense also have more money for government functions and the cost of government is higher.

Your yearly budget inflates with spending. A spending freeze on shcools, hospitals and transpertation for a year will deflate the budget for the following year. A recent large increase could be due to a large increase in tranpertation or what not.

My advice is to ignore the book keeping for now, buy a few hospitals and double your education index.

The four factors that raise cost of government:
1. The more countries you have, the higher cost of government will be in all countries in your empire.
2. The larger your country, the higher your cost of government will be in that country.
3. If you're ordering products for your country stock at greater than 100 Quality, the higher your cost of government will be. (Settings >> Automation >> Automatic Systems) Use this page to set your country to order 100 Q goods. There is no added benefit to higher Q goods in your country stock.
4. The higher your government salaries, the higher your cost of government will be. I recommend that you lower government salaries to 75% + 1 of your state corporation salaries.

Also check your country orders daily. If you auto ordered some product thats in short supply and your country doesnt get it in a couple of game months the order will be turned to an immediate order, which means you will buy at top dollar and top quality normally. Cancel any immediate orders and re-order normally. This can also occur if you get too far in debt where you get the message 'you can not buy... etc'. Ignore newspaper messages that say your country is not buying all it needs making sure youre not ordering too much stuff.