IF I WERE A BETTING MAN, as the saying goes, I would bet you that this Government will change in less than the constitutionally allotted time after a series of ongoing strikes and work-to-rule actions bring it and the country to their knees.
In short, the Government may be forced to seek a fresh mandate from the people so that it can carry on with the passive-aggressive policies which have characterised its tenure in office from almost D-0.
Eventually, there may be no tallying of bananas going on anywhere in the country. Daylight is coming and everybody wants to go home. Ah, I am just dreaming out loud in a newspaper column. What I can say is that there is hope for progress in this country – as either a society or an economy or a “collection of villages” as Errol Barrow famously called it – without the dismissal of the present administration from office.
Battered on all sides, the distressed Dolittle administration tries to push on, but it finds it can now make little headway. Its latest mantra is that it achieved a small primary surplus at the end of fiscal 2014-15. If you look at the most recent Central Bank report, for the first quarter of 2015-16, you may agree with me that that particular surplus seems to be already slipping away.
But let us not forget the big picture, the one depicting the abysmal failure of the 19-month structural adjustment plan, a package of austerity measures and budget cutting that was so hopelessly inept that it probably had no chance of doing what it was supposed to.
The fiscal adjustment measures were designed to increase Government revenue by $150 million above the outturn of $2 457.3 million of fiscal 2013. The measures would raise an extra $36 million in fiscal 2014 and $114.8 million in fiscal 2015.
In fact, the results were -$123 million (note that is a minus sign) in the first year, and $47.9 million the second year. So instead of a net gain to the Treasury of $150 million, there was a loss of $75.1 million.
On the spending side, the fiscal adjustment was going to cut Government expenditure by $285 million, with an $88.7 million reduction over the remaining seven months of fiscal 2013-14 and a $196.3 million cutback in the full fiscal year 2014-15. But current expenditure in the first year actually rose to $3 124 million, an increase of $47.4 million over fiscal 2014’s $3 076.5 million. In the second year, it fell to $2 944.9 million, a decrease of $131.6 million.
So instead of a net saving in spending for the Treasury of $285 million, the net saving over the period was $84.2 million. And instead of achieving a spread of $150 million in revenue and $285 million in savings at the end of the fiscal adjustment austerity programme, what did it achieve? A loss in revenue to the Treasury of $75 million and a saving in spending of $84.2 million.
I can’t bear to do that subtraction. Let’s just say that overall the 19-month programme achieved nothing financially but completely soured any hopes the Freundel Stuart administration may have had of winning back the hearts and minds of the people it subjected to its cruel and harsh measures.
I have heard a figure of close to $100 million being offered up as a grim sacrifice to toast the “success” of the programme, as in, “yeah, we might not have done everything we said we would, but that isn’t too bad, is it?” In other words, do as the Dolittle administration always does, which is to declare victory and move on.
And you may say that the $100 million or so did indeed come from the measures implemented (I didn’t hear how much in savings was claimed) and that you can’t add in all the other taxes and expenses. But it all comes from the same taxpayers, and therefore it does affect all other measures the Government has in place.
Now the Government is pursuing a tax grab of $200 million, as announced last month. In just one year. They are unlikely to get it, because the country cannot pay more unless there is more of an economy to create the wealth.
So not only has the Government turned off the people it was hoping to show it could still bring the economy back from the brink, but it has treated its employees so badly that the unions are on the march.
And, stunned to find that the old policy of a docile trade union mumbling “no problem” all the time was a thing of the past, the Government chose to lambast the leadership of the National Union of Public Workers in the bargain, firmly establishing its leader as a chief you must parley with. Threatening to change the Constitution in some way only showed how far out to sea the admiral was. In a leaky canoe.
The utter failure of the 19-month fiscal adjustment programme is at the root of the Government’s present union problems, because it has sought to make the cuts it must make to the public service wage bill by sending up a trial balloon. If it can establish it has the legal right to continue in the way it has done with the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation employees, and on that basis, thumbs its nose at the unions by proceeding to unleash a system-wide campaign of its “Sixty? You’re Out!” programme, then I believe more unrest will follow.
In the meantime, the public will suffer the consequences of bad policymaking, while the economy is dealt more blows than its fragile state may allow.