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THE BUDGET

Jan 31, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Budget is essentially an accounting statement. It indicates what revenues the government will collect during the fiscal year, what will be spent and how any shortfall (deficit) will be financed.
The Budget speech provides an explanation as to how this spending is linked to the policies of the government. It is an attempt to justify the expenditures and tax measures to be implemented.
The public must ask themselves two questions. Firstly: to what extent did the Budget speech achieve the objectives of outlining, explaining and justifying the expenditures and revenues of the government? Secondly: how will we benefit from this Budget?
This is fundamentally how a Budget should be assessed. It should be assessed in terms of its cogency and the benefits that will filter down to the citizens.
National Budgets are produced by governments. These governments have their class and constituency interests. A deeper analysis of the Budget should examine the class interests that are served by it. It should assess which class benefits the most. Is this the poor man’s Budget or was it designed to serve the vested interests of big business. Were the workers appeased or were they empowered. To what extent did the capitalist class benefit?
A Budget can also be used to determine a shift in emphasis by the government. This can take place at many levels. It can take place at the ideological level. Are there, for example, small droppings of socialist policies contained in the Budget or is the Budget a part of the continuation of the policies to support big business. Another way of putting it is: in whose interest is this Budget biased?
The next few days there will be debates all over about the Budget. People will talk about its strong points and muse over its weak points. In Guyana these debates are divisive, with supporters of the government being unabashed in highlighting what they think are the positives of the Budget and excusing the shortcomings as someone else’s fault. The supporters of the opposition, on the other hand, will be condemning what they view as the shortcomings of the Budget. They will try to find fault with it.
The debates in parliament are going to similarly lopsided. The absence of a third party in the National Assembly will not allow for an independent perspective to be given. There is no middle ground. That role will have to be attempted to be undertaken by the various commentators in Guyana, of which there is no shortage. But most commentators will not be unbiased.
Presenters of Budgets know how to please the people. They sugarcoat some offerings and give a few handouts and people get excited. They promise the business community some incentives to keep them happy.
Happiness does not always take you anywhere. Money does. Money pays the bills. Money allows you to send your children to school. Money talks; everything else walks.
In the final analysis, every citizen needs to calculate how much money this Budget will put in his/her pockets and how much it will take away from him/her. That is the gravy to which all the analysis should boil down.

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