THE AFC’S BUDGET PROPOSALS REPRESENT AN ACT OF PROVOCATION

Dec 19, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Alliance for Change (AFC) has presented the most politically opportunistic and almost brainless proposals for inclusion in next year’s annual Budget. The AFC is once again using the Budget process to partially achieve the campaign promises it made to its constituents.
On the campaign trail, the AFC promised to reduce the Value Added Tax (VAT). In its Budget proposals for last year, it asked for a mere 1% reduction. This must have shocked the living daylights out of the party’s constituents, many of whom were anticipating that the proposal would have been to remove the VAT.
Opposition supporters have been consistently fed the line that the cause of the high cost of living is the VAT. Yet there is no empirical evidence to support this and as such, these supporters have associated the pressures they face with the VAT and not with the increase in prices for food items globally.
Reducing the VAT by 12% makes absolutely no sense. This will not affect the cost of living for the poor but a 1% or 2% reduction in VAT can be used by large companies to skim millions away from taxes. The AFC’s VAT proposals will only therefore benefit the rich and not the poor people.
But by far the most scandalous proposals made by the AFC and one that insults the intelligence of their supporters, is the suggestion that the government reduce the toll on the Berbice River Bridge. This too was another campaign promise of the AFC. But how can the government do this when the Bridge is controlled by a private consortium and will not become the property of the State until the next fifteen years.
While indeed the formula for setting the toll represents a scandal in itself since it links the bridge tariffs to that what was charged for an inefficient and costlier ferry service, the AFC is yet to say just how the government is going to achieve this reduction.
Is the AFC proposing nationalization of the bridge? If so, it should state so. Or does it want taxpayers’ monies to be used to subsidize the bridge toll? If so it would only be using taxpayers’ monies to allow the private consortium that controls the bridge to profit from exorbitant rates.
Or is it proposing that transportation tariffs be regulated? This will mean that it will also have to regulate mini bus fares and hire car fares, because why pass a law only to benefit those who use the Berbice River Bridge and not other consumers who are also exploited by other means of private transport?
The call for equal access to the state media is both imprecise and outside of budgetary policies. If the AFC wants equal access it should indicate just what it means by equal access and make the distinction between access by government and access by political parties. AFC could not, however, be serious about equal access, because when it came to discussing the allegations of conflict of interest involving elements of its leadership, the AFC did not turn up to defend itself but had the temerity to call for a right to reply, having failed to accept the invitation for immediate response to the allegations.
The AFC has also made the call for the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission. This too is an extra-budgetary proposal. The AFC should be less enthusiastic about having this commission in place because the amount of powers that it will wield will make it all-powerful and if the contracting class gets a foothold in this commission, not even the majority of one would be able to constrain this commission. Having a Public Procurement Commission will not end corruption; it may not even reduce it. But it can institutionalize it.
The AFC has called for a 1% salary increase. When it was campaigning it had promised more. Ten percent is not an unrealistic proposal, but it does not address the fundamental issue of a living wage which some unions are now demanding.
The AFC, of course, is cautious about demanding a living wage because it knows that its allies in the private sector are not keen on a living minimum wage, since that would place all manner of pressures on their businesses.
The AFC needs to go back to Budget 101. Its proposals do not pass muster. But then again, the AFC is more interested in muscle, and in particular, muscle-flexing, when it comes to the Budget, as was so evident last year when it sought to settle old scores under the pretext of trimming the Budget.

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THE AFC’S BUDGET PROPOSALS REPRESENT AN ACT OF PROVOCATION

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