A drastic change is needed in the way this country’s economic and financial affairs are managed.
This has come from the Barbados Labour Party’s Economic Policy Team, led by leader of the Opposition Owen Arthur.
In a press conference today, Arthur spoke extensively on different economic matters and expressed concern about how Government was handling the economic crisis.
He said today’s press conference was the first in a series of engagements with the media to deal with matters of national significance.
The former prime minister pointed out that late last year when Government presented its budgetary proposals, it was on course of realising a deficit of almost $540 million in its capacity to meet operating expenses. He stated that this deficit could not be sustained.
“Government sought to address this by a series of measures which would amount to just over $150 million in a full fiscal year, leaving over $380 million in further adjustments to be soon undertaken by yet unspecified tax increases and expenditure cuts. Since then the Government has brought to Parliament requests for supplementary expenditure amounting to $141 million, and has provided guarantees for loans in excess of $329 million, most of which are unlikely to be paid by the entities on whose behalf the guarantees have been issued,” he said.
He argued that by such measures, Government “has merely added and is continuing to add to the extent of the financial crisis with which it will eventually and soon have to deal”.
Arthur also charged that Gvernment had ignored a proposal by the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) to establish a Special Commission which would make recommendations that would help bring down the fiscal deficit.
“Regrettably, this advice has been ignored, and Government continues to act unilaterally on the matter,” he stated.
In addition, he said the BLP?was also greatly concerned that there were a number of other financial commitments which the Government had made or will have to face in the immediate future that could weaken the country’s public finances.
