-doubtful about inclusion
While the combined opposition will by tomorrow submit proposals for inclusion into the 2013 budget to government, the leaders of both the AFC and APNU are not confident that their ideas would be seeing the light of day.
“They just want to see what we have. They are not saying what we put to them they will use. They just want us to show them… I am very confident that they will not include any of our suggestions, not a single one,” AFC leader Khemraj Ramjattan told Stabroek News last evening.
The AFC leader had earlier at his party’s weekly press conference expressed the same position when giving an update on the tripartite talks on the 2013 budget. He stated that government’s position was identical to the one it took last year and he felt that it would result in the same “non inclusion.”
“They don’t tell us anything when we meet. When we ask, it’s always, ‘We can’t say’… this is going to be the same like last time… if we don’t see some of the things when the budget is read next year, it’s going to have the same result as it did this year. There will be cuts,” he added.
Ramjattan explained that he had requested that the sessions be recorded because he wanted the public to know of their proposals and when need be reference could be made. “I begged them to let us have video camera and let our proposals be noted. [You could] always go back to the tape so nobody could say anyone was lying. They said no,” he stated.
Among AFC’s proposals will be across-the-board salary increases for public servants and sugar workers, Value-Added Tax reduction, duty-free concessions for eco-friendly vehicles and that monies such as the lotto funds that are in outside bank accounts be paid into the consolidated fund, making for better management and proper financial recording.
APNU leader David Granger’s position on inclusion into the planning of the 2013 budget was similar to that of Ramjattan. He recalled that in 2011, the opposition had originated a proposal to establish a tripartite budget committee. He said that earlier this year, he had written to President Donald Ramotar concerning its establishment, since it had gotten word that the 2013 budget was already in motion. However, it was never given a response.
Granger informed that APNU was subsequently invited to send a group to meet with Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh and led by APNU’s Shadow Finance Minister Carl Greenidge they did.
He stated that by tomorrow, APNU’s proposals will be handed to the Minister of Finance and that it includes recommendations such as poverty alleviation, boosting job creation and ensuring public accountability. “We are always concerned about poverty alleviation and fueling employment… Improved education is going to be priority because unless you develop your human resources, you will not get out of the economic drain that we are in,” he said.
APNU, he added, will give its recommendations and leave the process up to government with both optimism and skepticism as they feel that while they were asked for their input, government still treated them shabbily. “It is all now up to the government, since they have taken control and have been very commandeering of the entire process and have reduced the opposition to a mere consultative role rather than a participative one,” he said.
“We feel that we should have been participating in this budget planning because we are part of the law making process and not like other stakeholders, like the private sector, for example. … We speak for the majority of Guyanese and we want to ensure that their voices are heard and their needs met,” he added.
Granger said that if the 2013 budget was not favourable, “we will have to take action on the floor of the National Assembly.”
