President fails to keep Budget promises — APNU says

Apr 01, 2014 News

A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) member, Carl Greenidge, has announced that having sought to engage the government in the budget deliberation and formulation exercise for three years in succession, his party has nothing to show for it.
According to Greenidge, there are many stated reasons, all suspected to be falsehoods, why these meetings never took place. He was making reference to the 2014 Budget consultations when he said, “It is mighty strange that a problem of timing could cause the non convening of a meeting in one year, But three years is a little too much and we really need as a people to see what is going on.”

APNU’s Shadow Minister for Finance Carl Greenidge

He explained that APNU engaged fruitlessly in 2012 and 2013 on a number of issues that were raised with all the parties involved, including government. They made points and had discussions but none of the issues, he said, were addressed.
He said that the existing tax system is inequitable for a variety of reasons, the main one being that Government started the tax reform which was meant to adjust burdens sequentially. That has been stalled and the burdens of the masses have not been alleviated.
Greenidge said that President Donald Ramotar, when he came to office, promised “faithfully to establish a tax reform committee to look at these matters so that we wouldn’t find ourselves as parties arguing of this. It hasn’t happened; it is a sign of the type of bad faith that has categorized the exchanges between the political parties.”
He further said that the President was reminded by both opposing parties (APNU and Alliance For Change) by way of letter concerning the need for Constitutional Reform however, “nothing has been done no discussions have gone forward in that regard and… all the parties recognize that we need constitutional reform and agreed that this would be the subject of their joint attention.”
According to Greenidge, multiple points that were raised have not been addressed. He said that the Public Procurement Commission was one of them. Extra budgetary agencies including NICIL (National Industrial and Commercial Investment Ltd) were to make reports “or the government must ensure that these bodies report to the National Assembly.
“That has not been done either, on the state of the current financing or in terms of transferring excess resources that they hold to the Consolidated Fund.”
“One of the most egregious of the emissions is of course the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) which is on the verge of collapsing. The actuary, that is the professional employed to review performance of the NIS chair, warned in 2011 and again in 2012 that this scheme was in a peculiar state and we have an extensive number of people in the sugar industry and elsewhere in the country that have contributed monies,” said Greenidge.
He explained that monies were taken from their salaries, monies that could have been spent on education, their children or health and so forth to contribute to a scheme. “Then the government has mismanaged the scheme so, for example, monies over $1 Billion of your savings compulsory taken from you have been put into the Berbice Bridge.
“When the time came for the Bridge to pay dividends which is the income that now comes back to the NIS, the government’s representative and the board agreed that they would forgo the income and you are doing this on a scheme which is collapsing.”
He said that the revenue that NIS earned was less than the expenditure.
“That is what has happened to the scheme and the government promised faithfully that they would make a proposal by November 2012, to the National Assembly showing how this scheme would be revamped and financial collapse would be avoided.
“That has not materialized and is yet another instance of the President making promises and not delivering on them,” said Greenidge.
According to Greenidge, the need for the reestablishment of a professional Public Service was one that was very important with many dimensions including the reform of the structured implementation of recommendations made in the past about emoluments, yet “nothing has happened on these, no mention of them in the Budget but you have a whole lot of talk about modernization, about improving competitiveness and the like.”
Suicide rates are amongst the highest in the world; migration rates are amongst the highest in the world and the infant mortality is amongst the highest in the region, he added.
The shadow Minister of Finance articulated that economic development does not come about by spending and “hoping” but by having polices that support expenditures when they are put in place.
“What we find is that in these various stages monies are going to be allocated to sugar— fine. We have always said the industry needs to be fixed. Let it be fixed but it can’t be fixed by money alone.
“The reason why you are asking for $12B in one year, $13B in on year, $6B in another year is because having put the money in we make no arrangements to ensure that the board of directors is a competent board, that management aren’t twitching and jumping to the imperatives and preoccupations of the government itself.”
According to Greenidge there are a variety of areas in Budget 2014 which indicate that the Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh “and his colleagues may have sat in a room and decided to allocate monies randomly in different areas without any support polices.
“We don’t expect that these expenditures by and large will have any beneficial or significant impact on the well being and welfare of Guyanese as a whole.”