Parliament approved Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2025 of EC$1.85 billion around 3 a.m. Friday after an overnight debate in which Opposition Leader Godwin Friday said the document contains so many errors that he wondered if it was intentional.
The opposition leader also pointed out that while the fiscal package is the largest in the nation’s history, it contained a deficit of around EC$240 million but also shows that the government plans to collect EC$247 million more in revenue than it plans to spend.
“We have noticed … that there are numerous instances of neglect, inaccuracies or incoherence, and there are far too many of them to be mere inadvertent errors or oversight,” the opposition leader told lawmakers as he led off the debate Thursday evening.
“They result either from a deliberate — and I don’t wish to say that as the first explanation — but it’s a possibility, or from a don’t care attitude to the preparation of the estimates.”
He noted that before presenting the estimates, Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves had had the courtesy to explain that there had been changes on that day.
“… and it seems like we have to essentially continue to await the latest update on the preparation of this document,” Friday said, noting that lawmakers must respond to the document as presented to them.
He said that he anticipates that Gonsalves would praise himself in the budget address on Monday for the size of the budget.
“So let me get it out of the way and say it here. It’s the biggest budget ever,” Friday said, adding that the government has raised expectations that the fiscal package will “deliver something of great value to the people of this country because we are in uncharted territories, the biggest budget ever”.
He, however, said this is subject to “the usual problem of balancing, but not quite adding up.
We have, as the Minister has pointed out is a deficit budget with an overall deficit, for my calculations, of over $240 million.”
Friday said opposition lawmakers have asked themselves, as they do from year to year, how the government is going to implement all the plans in the budget when there is the recurring problem “of no real clear evidence as to where all the money coming from”.
He was speaking specifically about the category Other Receipts, adding that, as is usually the case, the finance minister mentioned it but did not detail where the amount — EC$278 million this year — would come from.
“It amounts to about 15% of the total expenditure. And being a part of the capital budget, it accounts for about 40% of the capital spending, and this is a big chunk of the capital spending that the minister outlined, but without any real sense as to where the money is coming from, whether it will actually collect it.”
Friday said analysis of this problem going back 10 to 15 years shows that there is very little chance of collecting anywhere near the amount.
“It shows that the government rarely collects even 5% of that total amount,” he said, adding that the Director of Audit has noted the issue.
“So, this is really an attempted sleight of hand to make this big budget seem so impressive to an unsuspecting public who expects to trust what the minister says as being real, genuine and properly backed up by funding from specific sources that we can trace or that we can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that It will come and that therefore the projects that are dependent upon it will get done,” Friday said.
“It’s not happening. And this sleight of hand, you might say, even an attempted fraud on the public, becomes a farce when we note that the minister says he intends to spend $696.3 million on capital projects this year … yet he intends to raise $943.6 million on the capital side of the estimate.”
Friday noted that the government intend to raise EC$247 million more than is needed for the capital projects.
“Most of that money, $598 million of it is actually borrowed money. So, you have to ask yourself, ‘Is this real? Does the minister intend to borrow money that he doesn’t need and pay interest on that money?’
“And the answer really is no. but it appears that this is essentially two things. One, the attempt to inflate the budget to make it look impressive, especially now in an election year, and also as any responsible Minister of Finance would do to make the budget balance, you can’t present a budget and say, ‘Well, listen, we’re going to do so much in capital projects, but we are $50 million short.’ That would be tantamount to recklessness.”
Friday said that when one looks behind the figures and “expose what is really a fallacy, you understand that doing it this way, of inflating, balancing with a number that essentially is convenient, that that just simply creates the problem from a different direction, but it amounts to the same thing. It deceives or attempts to deceive the people.”
The opposition leader anticipated that the finance minister would say that opposition MPs make this point every year.
“And that would be true, the figures are larger, but the analysis and the problem are the same, and the budget is not designed to inform at its core, in its essence, but to deceive.
“How else can you characterize it when there is this huge problem that is perpetrated year after year, without even so much of a comment from the Minister of Finance …”
Friday said his side must speak up and expose it and let the people know the real situation in the budget.
“That is our duty. We will be failing in that duty if we let it get away with their attempt to deceive the people. And it’s simple, if the minister doesn’t like us pointing this out and feels that we do it from year to year, whether it makes him uncomfortable or not, the equation is simple, stop the deception and the slack practice, and you will not hear from us on the subject matter. It’s simple, present an honest budget to the people of this country,” Friday said.