Barrow: Budget is bogus
It was presented a week ago and today, in front of a packed gallery, members of the House of Representatives debated the budget for the coming fiscal year. Leader of the Opposition, Dean Barrow, was the first to take the floor and in no uncertain terms, said the document presented last Friday was as phoney as a counterfeit blue note.
Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
“Government foreign debt, not including that three hundred million from D.F.C., will total one point two-five billion dollars this year as Government borrows another seventy-five million dollars. Of course, the consumers of water, electricity, and goods coming in through the Port Authority, will continue to bear the burden of another one hundred and sixty million dollars in debt transferred from government to the private owners of Belize Water Services Limited, Belize Electricity Limited, and the Port. Of course there’s not a private owner for the Port, I will say more about that later since they’re having extreme difficulty in hocking the Port. These debts all together Madam Speaker, add up to one point seven-one billion dollars.
Public debt in contrast in 1998, was only five hundred and twenty-one million dollars, of which Central Government owed only three hundred and fifty-seven million dollars. In addition Madam Speaker, government’s local debt has increased by thirty million dollars, to two hundred and five million dollars. Government’s overall budget deficit is to increase by twenty-one million dollars to seventy five million dollars. And even that is not accurate, as I will show later on, because a lot of the figures in the Prime Minister’s budget are bogus.”
“How on earth in an economy that it is admitted is contracting, are we going to produce an increase in recurrent revenue. You have only to look at the draft estimates Madam Speaker, to see how utterly unrealistic this projection is. Let me give you some examples if you will. The income tax with respect to the business tax, is projected to go up from the approved estimates for last year of fifty-one million to fifty-eight million now. Again Madam Speaker, in a contracting economy, how is that going to be possible. But it gets worse. For example Madam Speaker, they have introduced a speculation fee on lands that are not in production, that are kept idle. Last year they collected only one hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars from this speculation fee. But yet they’re projecting, as part of this twenty-eight million dollar increase in recurrent revenue, that for the coming financial year, they will collect one million, six hundred thousand dollars from the speculation fee. It is bogus Madam Speaker.”
“The overall deficit, even with the projected increase of twenty-eight million dollars in recurrent revenue, is seventy-five million dollars for next year. But if you don’t get the twenty-eight million dollars, and you don’t have this thirty-two million dollars recurrent surplus that they’re talking about, then of course that has a domino effect. You have far less for your capital spending, and it means that the overall surplus will then be well in excess of one hundred million dollars. So Madam Speaker, this is the starting point, the recurrent surplus, which is supposed to be piggy backing on the increase in recurrent revenue, which is non-existent.”
“There is no confidence in this economy. The foreign exchange crisis is affecting now even the prospects of repatriation of profits. Capital flight has set in, and the informal devaluation that the Economists Intelligence Unit put at seven percent in the last quarter of last year, is now more like twenty or twenty-five percent. In the circumstances, it is not just Madam Speaker that there are no jobs, it is that there is no hope.”
