When the Opposition's lead spokesman on Finance - Mia Mottley - pointed out there would be a shortfall in revenue and the projected 5% deficit would be more in the order of 8-8½%, the Government benches scoffed.

She warned then too about the rapid decline in our foreign reserves. Again they scoffed. But we now know she was right. The deficit was recorded at 8.4% and the Prime Minister eventually had to admit he was worried about the falling foreign reserves.

During the Estimates and Budget Debates, with the fiscal space getting tighter and tighter because of Thompson’s previous blunders and a worsening international environment, Mia Mottley warned him on both occasions that there was no room for unnecessary, even if desirable, expenditure on programmes like constituency councils.

Purporting to know better the Government continued to introduce new programmes on the back of declining revenues.

This was nothing short of irresponsible by a Minister of Finance driven solely by the political survival of his Government.

And now today the public servants of this country are once again being asked to bear the fruits of the Prime Minister’s actions – go to the front line and take the lashes for the Government’s incompetence. A wage cut by any other name is still a wage cut.

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The Prime Minster would do well to heed his own advice that success will only be achieved by a change in attitude.

In his case what is clearly required is a change in focus and attention to detail.

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The longer this Government is in office, the clearer it becomes that after all of their grandiose promises prior to January 15, 2008 - their commitment to the people of this country was based on empty words.

They had no plan.

They have no vision.
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By Clyde Mascoll

ON THE SAME DAY that the Minister of Economic Affairs is calling for a national wage freeze, the Minister of Finance and Prime Minister is proposing that Barbadians establish small businesses as the major way of creating jobs in the short term.

Apparently the Government has not yet learnt that it takes consumer spending to truly generate economic activity. In the face of recent evidence that additional taxation reduced consumption expenditure which comprised the base of Government tax collection, the idea of a wage freeze still emerges from the lips of a minister.

It is unreasonable to expect workers to bear the brunt of rising food cost; a 60 per cent hike in water rates; a pending increase in electricity on top of the fuel clause adjustments; staggered increases in telephone rates; higher cost of insurance; more road taxes to name a few, and then call for a national wage freeze.

The freezing of wages is an anti-growth strategy which puts jobs under more severe pressure both in the private and public sectors. The strategy reduces spending power and so hurts the private sector.
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