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The island's finances are looking in a positive position - the "books are balancing" - but the States still need to make tough decisions to deal with "underlying pressures" warns Deputy Heidi Soulsby.
Last year's accounts show an operating surplus - the difference between annual revenues and expenditure - of £10.2m.
That compares to a deficit of £3m for 2022.
After taking into account other factors, including fixed asset depreciation and the largely unrealised investment returns, the net surplus for 2023 was £63.7m - compared to an overall deficit of £135m the year before.
Deputy Soulsby told Express that it is a positive picture but we must look at the bigger picture.
"What it's showing is, and last year was much the same, we're balancing the books, from that point of view - year in, year out - that's really good. But there is an underlying structural issue, with the demand for health and social care growing and the need to improve our assets and invest in our capital.
"Those two structural issues are still there. We know that. We are effectively washing our face as it were, but underlying there are real tensions."
The Vice-President of Policy and Resources says the issues facing the island are all well known - and that this year's operating surplus of £10m should not detract from the wider work being done to shore up the island's finances for our future needs.
That includes a need to invest in our capital infrastructure and changes needed to our model of health and social care.
"The same issues are still there," said Deputy Soulsby. "We show our net assets and we've got like £3.8billion worth of net assets that is met by our reserves. A lot of them are specific purposes and at the end of the day we've got £365m unallocated, which is effectively what's left to invest in capital, so that shows that tension is still there, and we've also got the strains through the growing demand in health and social care and needing to move to a more sustainable model."
Overall the island's 'books are balanced' but the challenges widely reported last year remain and Deputy Soulsby told Express that is the key message to come out of this set of accounts.
"It's balancing the books, but the underlying issues are still there and I think that's important thing," she said.
"We need to focus on sustainable health and we need to ensure that we're investing capital we need and we need to get more housing and those are the three takeaways.
"But we are managing it, committees other than Health and Social Care are managing within their budget and what we've got to do is strive to improve every year. This is an historic record and the important thing is what we do going forward."
Over the coming days Express will be reporting in detail on different aspects of the 2023 States Accounts.
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