Bogus accounting and “nothingness” have vied with inertia, leaps in the dark, fluff and flatulence in this year’s Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals.
So declared Opposition Leader Owen Arthur in a fiery three-hour reply to the Government’s Budget in the House of Assembly yesterday evening.
Arthur criticized Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler for failing to address burning issues like the cost of living and CLICO, for sticking rigidly to a medium-term fiscal strategy whose rapid adjustment could humiliate Barbados in the eyes of international rating agencies, and for repeating the former administration’s plans for motorsport and the cultural industries as if they were new.
Pointing to suffering at the individual level and uncertainty at the corporate level, the former Prime Minister offered advice, in a speech punctuated with amusing anecdotes that caused Speaker Michael Carrington to silence those laughing in the Public Gallery, adding that the process should not be seen as “a form of cheap entertainment”.
Read the full story in today’s DAILY NATION.
