Rowley: Budget promised a lot, delivered little
Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley has labelled yesterday’s budget a disappointing one, saying only three areas were definitive but apart from that, “the budget promised a lot but delivered a little”.
The three definitive areas, Rowley said, were Government’s treatment of the CLICO fiasco, Hindu Credit Union issue and the establishment of a database for the Motor Vehicle Department.
Following Finance Minister Winston Dookeran’s budget presentation, Rowley said “it was simply a rehash of the cliched proposals that have formed past budgets.
“Outside of those three areas, those of us who are familiar with the annual budget exercises would have recognise all the cliches, the CNGs, the small businesses, the agriculture comments,” he said, adding there was absolutely nothing directional about the budget or a change of direction.
On the proposition for the Unit Trust Corporation, he said there was nothing new there. The proposition for the UTC, he said, was one of many things that were either underway or were established or previously proposed as government policy.
“I was expecting that the new Government that promised so much change would have brought some change. There was no change to anything in Trinidad and Tobago after this budget. I expected that there would be something that would change our circumstance. This budget does not do it,” Rowley said.
He said the budget was “very mundane, very stilted and cliched and offered us no improvement in our current circumstances, and all the brilliance that was promised. In draughts we have a term that we use, ’stay long and play long.’”
His colleague, Laventille West MP NiLeung Hypolite, said he was fearful about the $8 billion deficit highlighted in the budget and how it was going to be financed.
“Last year we had a budget of approximately $45 billion with a deficit of some $4 billion. We are looking at a budget (this year) of $41 billion with an increased deficit of some $8 billion.”
He said the nation has not been told how the deficit will be financed.
Like Rowley, he too said that “most of these things inside that budget are issues or policies that the People’s National Movement government had started to put in place.”
He gave the example of the proposed construction of a tunnel from Tunapuna to Maracas.
While the PNM government would have moved away from the idea of the tunnel to the Rapid Rail, which would have taken care of a wider mass of people along the east west corridor and the southern corridor, Hypolite said the Government was “looking now at putting that tunnel system from Tunapuna to Maracas, which would cost the same as the Rapid Rail”.
In addition, he said, the Government was continuing with the former PNM government’s proposal for the construction of the six highways and the hospital at Point Fortin. (rinidad Express)