2022 Budget Preview: Focus on Infrastructure & Education

John Briceño

As the next fiscal year for G.O.B. is quickly approaching, the presentation of the budget is already underway. For the last two years, a high percentage has been pumped into the COVID response for the country. While we were with PM John Briceño this afternoon, News Five asked what is the 2022-2023 Budget looking like. The PM says there will be a focus on infrastructure development and education.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The first thing I can tell you is that we don’t expect to increase any taxes, but we are certainly looking at the issue of infrastructure development, housing. In less than one year, we have built eighty low-cost houses, something that the previous government in thirteen years did not do. We want to do more of that; we want to probably, hopefully double that effort. We want to look on issues of education, the expansion of NHI in the north. So there are going to be some exciting things. But we have not officially presented it to cabinet so I think that is as far as I can go.”

Duane Moody

“Sir, I know that a lot of funding did go to health, for obvious reasons. Are we going to see maybe some of the money pulled from there to go to other…”

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Well it is not a matter of pulling monies from the Minister of Health; remember COVID is still here. We may be able to ease the restrictions, but we still have to be able to do some of these. Hopefully we don’t have to do as much testing as we’ve been doing. So if there is monies that we can save and try to divert especially to education, certainly we will do so.”