Lawmakers, on Wednesday, approved Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2019 amounting to EC$1.12 billion, paving the way for the presentation of the budget on Monday.
Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves said that the estimates provide for a number of new posts and initiatives.
The government will build on its track record of improving the quality and quantity of persons in its employ, he said.
Therefore, 37 new posts will be created in the Ministry of Finance in preparation for creation of the procurement unit. Consequent on the recent passage of the procurement act, eight new posts were created.
Eight additional posts were also added to the Information Technology Services Division, as a consequence of the completion of the roll-out phase of the CARCIP infrastructure project.
He said that with the fibre optic linkages completed, the use of the CARCIP hardware would begin and require additional staff.
Gonsalves said that 18 posts have been created under the Customs and Excise Department, most of which are intended for the Argyle International Airport to ensure and improve on the quality of service provided there.
The Ministry of Transport has critical responsibility in this year’s budget as the government’s chief implementation agency.
The finance minister said that the capital programme is “particularly ambitious” this year and the government has allocated 16 posts to the Ministry of Transport to strengthen its electrical inspectorate and Engineering and project Management Service Units.
The minister said he hopes that “these additional hands on deck” will enhance the implementation capacity of that ministry.
He said that some of the posts in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, which also has implementation responsibilities, were dedicated to that goal as well.
He said that there are procurement officers, etc., who it is hoped will remove some of the bottlenecks in the implementation process.
Gonsalves said that consequent on SVG’s election to a two-year term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, 10 new posts have been created in the Ministry of Finance.
These new positions are intended to provide greater support to the SVG UN Mission and the Foreign Policy and Research Unit
The minister said there are requirements for additional quality personnel not only at the mission in New York but also at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kingstown.
He said the work of the Security Council will involve communication between the UN Mission and Kingstown to provide the necessary research capacity, advice and analysis to the myriad foreign policy challenges that will arise, to better serve the prime minister, foreign minister, and UN Ambassador.
Gonsalves said that 13 posts have been created in the autonomous department, with five of them going to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution in response to an additional criminal court, which is expected to begin sitting next week.
The Audit Office will also receive four additional members of staff.
The Ministry of Education has 12 new posts, mainly related to the staffing of three early childhood centres.
As we dabble in socialism we forget that Socialism doesn’t work. What do we have here, if not nothing but more increase in government spending, deficits and debts and more increase in government jobs. Just the sort of policies that had got 1970’s Britain and Sweden into trouble and to their knees and in the more recent past Brazil. Socialism does not work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QaZEGcoGXo
Indeed the economies of North Kores, Cuba and Venezuela stands as good examples of dictatorships with very bad economic records where the Tax and Spend policies results in nothing but increase in government jobs, reduced private sector employment and economic stagnation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-SdftH0mfA
“Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves said that the estimates provide for a number of new posts and initiatives”. In other wards more Government jobs as noted at the expense of the private sector economy because of the extra Taxes that are required to run the big government and engage even more government jobs drives out private businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKhR9i5CGkA
“37 new posts will be created in the Ministry of Finance in preparation for creation of the procurement unit”. “Eight additional posts were also added to the Information Technology Services Division,” “18 posts have been created under the Customs and Excise Department,” “16 posts to the Ministry of Transport…” “13 posts have been created in the autonomous department..”
“The Ministry of Education has 12 new posts,”
Socialism does not work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5nfracXAt4
Vincentians needs learn from History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUUjoVjdM0
These kind of socialist policies that this government are so keen to inflict on the suffering Vincentian people keeps us in bondage wedded to begging for foreign Aid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryeHIY8uBnQ
Big Government is a waste of tax payers money. Small and efficient Government is proper use of tax payers money.
Creating government jobs only increases government expenditure and cannot be counted as job creation. Just before any election a government can create government jobs creating the illusion of there being genuine job creation. Genuine job creation comes from industry not government, and very little of that has happened.
This is quite simply another load of BS.
This is the problem!
More government jobs means more taxes to pay thier salaries. The ‘family” will not be happy until 90% of our earnings are taken away for taxes. The government of Saint Vincent is already way over-staffed. There are so many government employees (ULP supporters) that have so little to do and the bill is sent to the people!
The Millionaires talking about more regulation. The well oiled machine. Meanwhile in Mayreau, the people need 50 more public works workers and none coming. Obviously, The Grenadines will take care of itself. Right Minister? And, do we have the qualified people to fill those new jobs? Ummff?. You strengthening the government and weakening the people for your own gains, looks like. Though this sound like ‘good’ news, we also know the ‘no-good’ side of you.
David slew Goliath with a sling and a stone. The Bible say. However, https://fee.org/articles/the-nature-of-government-by-ayn-rand/ for my homeboys.
Many labour party followers here in SVG have uttered the phrase “we ah Labour we na tun back”! But how many of these red shirted, red capped individuals truly understand the full implications of that sad utterance. How many will take the time to understand where the leader of their labour movement is leading them, or even where he has drawn his inspiration from.
His ideas are derived from Karl Marx’s, Marxism that “is a method of socioeconomic analysis that views class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and takes a dialectical view of social transformation of society”. This philosophical ideology is just that, an ideology rather than having a factual base for its content. Its impact upon our world since its inception has been nothing but an utter disaster for humanity.
It has brought nothing but death, destruction and profound poverty to each and every nation that has ever dabbled with it. Starting with the Soviets who first implemented it. From Euro Asia, Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and here in the Caribbean it has failed miserably.
It is an ideology of envy, envy that appeals to the poor and is extensively exploited by dictators and would be dictators to their own ends. From Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez the list just goes on and on, continually telling us that Marxist Socialism does not work.
Yet its appeal to those “who do not have” continues apace and giving would be dictators and dictators like Stalin, Hitler to Pol Pot political legitimacy. However we need to stop and ask just where is this failed ideology taking Vincentians?
Ralph Gonsalves gross disparaging comments about our fellow Vincentians, who support their needy families here in SVG from their hard earned incomes abroad, has drawn no apology, for Ralph rudely telling his red wearing supporters, some of whom actually derive benefits from those same “hard working expats Vincentians”, just goes to show us how dunce and docile some Vincentians really truly are.
Rather than taking the man Gonsalves to task, those red shirt individuals, in their red attire, just sat glumly and stood mum, while Gonsalves insulted their kind relatives, hard-working relatives living abroad who send money and items here, his calling them workless idle bums, who live hand-to-mouth in Canada, USA and the UK.
These red attired Vincentians muted silence, demonstrates how unsuccessful Ralph’s much vaunted “education revolution” is, as his audience could not see how two plus two make four, and Ralph says as much, when he is overheard disparaging his very red attired dunce audience, in much the same way. They can’t add up he says. And for sure they most obviously can’t.
These very members of his audience are one and the same descendants of African Slaves, whom he had requested to “own the government” for the benefits of administered nepotism and crony jobs. Their government employment in jobs would not come through merit but rather through their known party affiliates, access to the party apparatus and party machinery.
But could the Gonsalvesonamics that he offers them ever deliver what it promises? Of courses not! Not now! Not ever and not in a million years! But as Gonsalves have said, his audience can’t add up nor even reason for a single moment. They are but children in need of paternal fatherly care and a ruling papa. So enter Ralf Gonsalves and the Gonsalves family, their ever benevolent provider.
For those Vincentians who have not yet worked out why Gonsalvesonamics has never worked or can ever work, you should picture for a moment a swimming pool full of water and teaming with life of, lobsters, crayfish and mullets.
The pool has a constant flowing 1 inch pipe topping it up with water, but it also have a 12 inch pipe attach to the bottom of the pool, which is left open and letting the water out. It does not take a genius to work out, that after a very short time the swimming pool would be empty of water, leaving the lobsters, crayfish and mullets high and dry and eventually stone cold dead.
And so it is with Gonsalvesonamics! The Swimming pool is the Vincentian economy. The lobsters, crayfish and mullets are us Vincentians. The constant flowing 1 inch pipe topping up the pool with water is the taxes we pay, fulling the government coffers.
And the 12 inch pipe attach to the bottom of the pool is the pay-out the government makes on its employees and running government. Eventually its bloated expenditure being larger than its receipts of tax, crashes the economy, leaving us all high and dry and sucking salt. But as Ralph Gonsalves has deduced, many Vincentians who have flocked to him, cannot count nor reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryeHIY8uBnQ
The graveyard of history is littered with the corps of failed Gonsalvesonamics from the Stalin Soviets to Mao’s China. From Harold Wilson’s Britain to Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania. From Castro’s Cuba to Chavez Venezuela. From the Gandhi India to Pol Pot’s Cambodia. From Norman Manley’s Jamaica to Robert Murgab’s Zimbabwe.
Tax, Tax, Tax. The open 12 inch pipe that drains the life blood out of all socialist inspired economies stifles enterprise, creates capital flight, destroys private sector jobs but sustains the elite in power.
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/zimbabwes-farmers-lament-taxes-200124194449388.html
All these socialist inspired economies have failed to deliver what was promised because it is not a workable system of a political economy.
As Adam smith in 1776 has shown; that “The Wealth of Nations” and their peoples are built differently from the Marxist inspired system. Maybe a true Education Revolution would eventually wake-up these descendants of African Slaves to the hard reality of life, that they do not need a benevolent PAPA as their Moses. Gonsalvesonamics is nothing but a fraud, operated from the top.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations
Socialism brings only high taxes, distress and pain with it. “Venezuela as an example has the world’s highest murder rate – many of them extrajudicial killings by police”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/venezuela-worlds-highest-murder-rate-200123135543539.html