Senate Debates 2016/2017 Budget: No Stimulus for Business Community

Mark Lizarraga

The budget for fiscal year 2016/2017 was discussed at length by the Senate this morning, succeeding a two-day heated debate in the House of Representatives a week ago. Dubbed “Stability in a Time of Change,” G.D.P. growth is forecast at one point five percent with a deficit that expanded to five percent.  While the proposed expenditure for the financial year beginning April first has been carefully deconstructed by politicians on either side of the floor, the Senate today perused government’s plan for the fiscal year.  The first to take the floor was the private sector senator and from the perspective of the business community, the budget makes little or no accommodation for stimulus, despite an overall decline in fuel prices globally. The General Revenue Appropriation Bill, according to Senator Mark Lizarraga, has once again overlooked the commercial sector, saddling the business community instead with a fifty-million-dollar tax hike.

Mark Lizarraga, Senator, Business Community

“In the budget presentation it was claimed that this is the budget of an administration determined that no matter what to keep faith with the teachers and public officers.  Granted.  Done.  With the poor people, I’m not so sure about that.  With the middle class, how?  More people are going into poverty.  And it claims with business, where?  Where?  We acknowledge that the primary sector is in trouble.  It’s in a defensive position.  The secondary sector as well.  Manufacturing – defensive posturing.  No hope.  The budget presentation acknowledges it, it claims that the sector that is performing well is the tertiary sector but it does not identify what and how it’s going to stimulate the primary and the secondary sectors.  And we need those sectors.  We need those sectors for the private sector to play its rightful role in stimulating this economy.  We cannot continue to have, every country in the world that has tried to have public sector driven economy has failed and gone bankrupt.  And we’re going there you know, we di head down that path.  We spit in the face of all the international agencies that warn us otherwise because we’re hell bent on this path and we are concerned in the business community because we continue to pay for it.  The world around us has enjoyed falling oil prices.  Here was a perfect opportunity to give the business sector and the productive sector and the agricultural sector a much needed boost.  Fifty million dollars could have been injected as stimulus.  What did we do?  Well you know what we did.  When oil prices were high we had high taxes and we were reaping off the top.  Oil prices dropped, you think we get reprieve?  No.  Government takes up the slack.  Fifty million dollars tax hike is what the business sector has gotten from this budget.  No stimulus, no encouragement, no hope.  But a fifty million dollar tax hike.”