The Estimates of Income and Expenditure for 2015, to be presented in Parliament on Wednesday, is “a joke”, Leader of the Opposition Arnhim Eustace says.
“The estimates, as far as I am concerned, that are to be presented on Wednesday, are a joke. They are a typically thing that you get in an election year, and very little will be done by the time the election year is finished,” he said Monday on his weekly radio programme.
Vincentians must vote by March 26, but general elections are widely expected by December 2015.
“We will not live up to figures that are in the Estimates,” Eustace said, adding that they are “very unrealistic”.
“The deficit on the recurrent budget is 147 million [dollars], even higher than before,” he said, and accused the Ralph Gonsalves government of including “some fictitious figure about other receipts…”
Eustace said that the Prime Minister has told public sector unions that his will not pay a bonus this year.
“He told them so last week. He wants the private sector to pay it — who closing down and who they owe,” Eustace said.
Related: Source expects ‘bacchanal’ after PM, trade unions meeting
Gonsalves recently announced that his government will give a tax break to any company that pays their employees a end-of-year-bonus of EC$250 or more.
Gonsalves will on Wednesday take to Parliament Estimates of Income and Expenditure of EC$969 million for 2015.
Of that amount EC$560 million will be for current expenditure and EC$112 for amortisation and sinking fund contributions.
He said the capital budget for 2015 will be EC$296 million.
“On the current account, as I had indicated … two years ago, we will run a deficit on the current account for a short period of time. The debt will begin to fall in 2016 — God’s willing we don’t have any more storm humbugging us,” Gonsalves said recently on his radio programme.
Will anyone really take Eustace serious. From day one since the ULP took office in 2001, every year Eustace sings the same tune. He is an old man to be really sorry for
My friend there is only two years between Gonsalves and Eustace. Regardless of what you say, Mr. Eustace, everything he has ever said has come true, forget all the crap about personality and lack of charisma . He is an honest man, never calls citizens nasty name or make rude and indecent gestures, never charged with a sexual offence, not known to tell lies, fiscally informed and fiscally intelligent.
I keep saying this when I write about this fictitious budget sum of money that they are looking for approval for. To put forward figures that are knowingly unachievable is simply another form of telling lies by someone who I would describe as a serial liar.
What Gonsalves is ignoring is that the government is broke and cannot pay the government workers a Christmas bonus, we have never been told where the US$1 Million came from, was that a Christmas bonus for the upper echelons of the ULP party, whilst the poor go hungry.
As for the private sector paying Christmas bonus, they are all as broke as the government. If the ULP government paid the money owed to private industry for a number of years now, I am referring to the $60 million rip off, perhaps then they could pay some bonuss.
As for storms affecting the economy, they have affected the island for thousands of years.
Gods willing we dont have any more storm humbugging us, Gonsalves said recently on his radio program. I must ask where he has been living for the last 69 years? We have had storms just about every year for thousands of years. Earth quakes, storms, floods, hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions less frequently. I wonder if the ULP do not pray for such tragic circumstances, because what I can see is that the ULP have made a business and international scrounging income from our annual storms and tragedies.
Even the flooding at Buccament has been happening for thousands if not millions of years, its a known flood plain This very ULP government authorized the building of a resort and houses in the flood plain.
The thing about Mr. Eustace is that everything he has ever said has come true, forget all the crap about personality and lack of charisma . He is an honest man, never calls citizens nasty name or make rude and indecent gestures, never charged with a sexual offence, not known to tell lies, fiscally informed and fiscally intelligent.
Its time for a change and its time for the truth.
Eustace should present an alternative opposition budget, as many opposition parties in other countries often do. But this is a lot of work, something the NDP seems adverse to doing.
It’s easy work to criticize; it’s hard work to to offer thoughtful and detailed alternatives.
Many Vincentians are fed up with the ULP but are doubtful that the NDP is ready to govern.
Blackman…When over billion dollars in debt and counting has been added to country under the ULP. HELL YEAH you have to take Mr. Eustace seriously.
Everything he has said about the economy has come to pass, on the other hand we still waiting for the economic take off.
Don’t be a mental slave Blackman, your better than that!
The government cannot give hard working public servants a bonus because the treasury is in a bad financial state. The private sector is also facing very harsh financial difficulty,so how can the PM expect the private sector to give their employees a $250 bonus.The public service workers in St.Kitts will be getting a ‘ double your salary bonus’, although they are facing a similar financial situation as SVG. What the government should of done was to wave the VAT on those items that carry the tax,this would be a better bonus and stimulus to everyone,employed or not.
The problem is that Ralph Gonsalves is a Keynesian and that is the worst Economics ever concocted. It is failing everywhere with every country using it all drowning in debt. It is spend, borrow tax economics, and if the economy is bad it says you can “spend your way into recovery”!!! If SVG used Supply side Economics, we would be a prosperous nation such as Singapore or China, Germany. Gonsalves has great Foreign policy Philosophy but loser economics.