Budget 2014 was delivered on Monday March 24, just one week before the constitutional deadline and almost three months into the fiscal year. Under the theme A Better Guyana for All Guyanese, the Budget Speech was just two minutes short of three hours.
The Minister presented a budget strong on subsidies but weak on ideas and job-creation, one in which he spent considerable time justifying increasing resources to keeping sugar workers on GuySuCo’s payroll rather than produce cane and sugar. In an interesting logic, Central Government now seems willing to assume responsibility for garbage collection rather than to concede the right of citizens to local government elections. Citizens of Georgetown must pay the City Council rates & taxes to pay salaries to persons no longer required to carry out their basic functions, and pay taxes to Central Government to collect garbage.
In considering the merits of the Budget, the first point to note is that the Budget is not complete or compliant with the Constitution. The diversion of monies from the Consolidated Fund to myriad questionable funds, including to NICIL of which the Minister of Finance is Chairman ,and the abuse of dormant accounts has been refined into an art form, a violation of the Constitution.
Thumbing its collective nose at the country, the Government has withdrawn the constitutional right of public servants to negotiations through their recognised unions and put in place a bloated army of contract workers whose pay bill jumped by 55% in the two years from 2012 to 2014.
While the Minister regales the National Assembly with numbers, tucked away in Appendix 1 to the Budget Speech are data showing that each year more than thirteen thousand Guyanese prefer to seek that better life else. With new data, most likely from the incomplete 2012 census, the estimate of the total population for the last five years was revised downwards, with a cumulative drop of of 47.4 thousand or 6.3% at the end of 2012.
As a percentage of the National Budget, both education and health continue to decline. Both the Infant and Under 5 mortality rates declined from 5 years ago while 7.6% of the population is now considered overweight.
The most troubling data however are the cases of serious crimes, an increase from 3,760 in 2012 to 4,204 in 2013, with murders increasing over the same period from 139 to 155.These are frightening statistics that raise the question whether the Government can provide the most basic need of the citizens, security.
As noted under Legislation, the Mortgage Interest Relief which was announced in last year’s presentation and which should have been available to first time homeowners shortly thereafter is still to be fully implemented, the result of resistance of the refund mechanism from the lending institutions.
Some statistics are just too good to be true – a 76% hotel occupancy defies all empirical evidence while visitor arrivals of 200,122 reported in paragraph 4.36 of the Budget Speech is contradicted by statistics sourced to the Bureau of Statistics which reported arrivals at 157.8 thousand, a difference of a not insignificant 26.8%.Reluctantly one has to question the reported 0.9% change in the Consumer Price Index (inflation rate), aided by a strange group described as “footwear and repairs” which fell by 14.2%. Other than the two words rhyme, it is not easy to understand the link between them.
Last year the Minister of Finance failed to explain how the $4.4 billion voted in the 2013 Budget for Revision of Wages and Salaries, or 15.2% of the prior year wage bill, was utilised when only 5% was paid. His response in Budget 2014 is to rename the line item to a more amorphous term Other Employment Costs. That it is that easy to rename budgetary line items in use for decades to favour a Minister shows the control which he exercises over public sector accounting and auditing.
As summarised under Budget Measures, a number of subsidies have been announced along with a 5% increase in Old Age pensions. In an essay Pro-Poor Policies to which the Women’s Organisation Red Thread contributed, the women show that the National Minimum Wage pronounced into law fixed last year is nearly $25,000 less than the cost of a basket of food recommended by the Carnegie School of Home Economics.
The presentation of the 2013 figures bares the meaninglessness of the excitement with which each Budget, whatever its contents, is dubbed “the biggest budget ever”. The 2013 budget at $208.8 billion was touted as the biggest ever. It turned out to be $175.8 billion, almost the entire difference attributable to a shortfall in Capital expenditure.