Budget 2014 is a huge disappointment; it seems to contain only a shopping list for Expenditure, while offering to do nothing on employment creation and addressing the critical issues of corruption and better public sector financial management. Indeed, there is growing evidence that the country’s financial management is under serious threat, despite regular warnings. Despite the usual grandiloquence there is no real evidence of a central theme or the direction in which the Government proposes to take the country.
The Budget paid very little attention to job creation and none to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), which is still reeling from the disaster of CLICO. Dr. Ashni Singh is not only the Minister responsible for the NIS but was also the Minister responsible for CLICO’s oversight when it collapsed. It is all the more troubling that there is such little interest in what is an equally badly executed liquidation, which is discussed under Commentary and Analysis.
Little was said about the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project and how the need for the low-cost energy will be met. Concerns that there may be backroom moves to resuscitate the project under the radar cannot be discounted even as the Government announces a study into the feasibility of hydropower from Mazaruni and the consideration of wind power from Hope Beach.
Indeed Ram & McRae finds it hard to understand the $16,000 million allocated for equity contribution to the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project. We believe that item alone makes this Budget incapable of approval, or in common parlance, dead on arrival.
It was a budget driven by subsidies and handouts with the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and Guyana Power and Light, Inc. (GPL) continuing to be major beneficiaries while the Government resists calls for a review of their operations. It seems irresponsible for GuySuCo to be allocated any further budgetary support until it complies with the law relating to the tabling of annual accounts and reports.
In this edition of Budget Focus 2014, we reviewed the decisions by the Court in what is being called the “Budget Cuts Case”. We believe that the court fell into error and therefore welcome the decision by the Speaker to appeal the decision of the one-man constitutional court. The National Assembly now proceeds to have the Estimates examined by the Committee of Supply which the court stripped of any real purpose and function, prompting one seasoned commentator to describe the process as “high farce”.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly itself has been stymied in its work by the Executive and the President who appears to treat the opposition as an obstacle rather than a partner in progress. If there is no progress on resolving the impasse over the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism amendments, all the projects by the Minister of Finance could be placed at risk. We therefore join in appealing to everyone to put Guyana first.
Ram & McRae predicts that the Government will have a difficult time to persuade the parliamentary opposition to support certain budgetary allocations for projects and initiatives that appear to have received inadequate planning; or to allow the spending on NCN from which so much of the country is shut out; or to finance some of the government’s pet projects.
There is a belief that the PPP/C is unwilling to function without a clear majority which would allow it to have its unhindered way in the Assembly. Cynics might even suggest that the 2014 Budget was designed to invite a rejection of the Budget and justify returning to the polls and forestalling long delayed and much feared local government elections.
