Opposition Leader Godwin Friday says opposition lawmakers have noted “many shortcomings” in the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2025 that Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves is slated to ask Parliament to approve on Thursday, paving the way for the presentation of the budget on Monday.
Friday told a New Democratic Party (NDP) press conference in Kingstown on Wednesday that he intends to use the four hours allocated to him to debate the Estimates “to hold the government accountable for what they say and what they didn’t say in the budget”.
He said that lawmakers will be asked to approve a new budget even as the government has failed to deliver on many of the things in the 2024 fiscal package.
The opposition leader said this is even the case in East St. George, the finance minister’s constituency, despite his boast that Budget 2024 was “an East St. George budget”.
Friday noted that 2025 is an election year and urged Vincentian to pay close attention to the budget debate.
“Follow the presentations and hold the government accountable for what is presented and for what it leaves out,” he said.
“Remember, this is an election year. It’s all the more important and timely that you and me, all in this country, pay particular attention to this year’s budget presentation.”
Friday noted that the Unity Labour Party has been in office for almost 24 years, adding that the government has failed to deliver on many of its past budget promises.
“This budget will be no different in my view,” he said.
The opposition leader said the situation in SVG is “bleak, the present government presides over a country … where one in five persons are employed, where over 40% of the young people are unemployed, where wages in St. Vincent and the Grenadines are the lowest in the OECS and CARICOM, where our national debt now stands at 2.85 billion”.
The national debt as a percentage of GDP is 93.6%, Friday said, citing the Estimates.
He said the government had committed to reduce the figure when it was over 80% even as it gave “all kinds of excuses.
“… Servicing that debt costs 36% of current revenue annually. That’s 36 cents out of every dollar that the government makes in taxes and the revenue that it collects, the money that it needs to pay for the services that it delivers to people without borrowing, … goes to service the debt,” Friday said.
“This means money is being spent to cover debt rather than for creating new opportunities to help put money back in ordinary people’s pockets.”
He said SVG has the seventh-highest murder rate in the world, with 54 homicides in 2024, 55 in 2023 and 42 in 2022, all record numbers.
“So, clearly, we’re going in the wrong direction. The ULP has created these problems, and they have proven over the past five years or more, I say five years because that’s the length of an election cycle, that they cannot fix the mess that they have created.
“With numerous broken promises from both the 2020 manifesto that they put forward — a tissue of lies — and the 2024 budget, they have demonstrated that they are out of touch, and, more importantly, that they have taken the people of this country for granted because they make promises that they don’t fulfil.
“But worse than that, based on the budget exercises and the lack of funding — and you’ll hear more about that next week — they do not intend ever to fulfil them. So rather than fixing the problems that matter to people in the budget coming up, they will continue to talk big and deliver little.”
Friday said the government has already begun to boast about the 2025 fiscal package with an official in the Ministry of Finance saying it will be the biggest ever.
“We’re in Texas. Everything is bigger under this ULP. But is it better? And this is a budget that has big holes in it.”
Friday said that with 2025 being an election year, the government would want the people “to forget four years of neglect and broken promises and for them to play grabby, grabby.
“Know that they have all kinds of handouts and empty promises in the upcoming budget. I want people to understand this. It is coming. Don’t be fooled by it,” the opposition leader said and went on to list some of the promises in the 2024 budget that the government has not fulfilled.