Weekly Column

Barbadians are therefore anxious to see what creativity he will bring to the process of maintaining growth in the productive sectors while protecting them from high prices and the threat of job losses.

For most, if not all of them this means no more taxes. They are still reeling from the Prime Minister’s $104 million plus tax extraction last year that touched everyone from the shopkeeper to the professional and everyone in between.

Beyond what has now been deemed to be the cruel and unusual punishment of an unprecedented hike in licensing fees, last year’s Budget failed to generate the desired growth in the economy. It was a contractionary Budget at a time when the country required the very opposite.

Your Opposition warned the Government that this would be the result, but they would have none of it and preferred in their wisdom to counter advice with personal abuse. Well the proof of the pudding is quite rightly in the eating. The Prime Minister now finds himself between a rock and a very hard place entirely of his own making.

We know that he will seek to blame the global economic environment for all of the ills he faces, but the truth is that he has made a difficult economic situation very much worse than it had to be. And he has done so through his own incompetence.

He has done so through an apparent lack of understanding of how our economy functions and he has done so with little regard for the needless hardship he has forced on what until recently was a supportive population. None of these things augur well for the presentation he will deliver on Monday afternoon.

If history is anything to go by we expect him to batten down the hatches and all but shut up shop. Except for the high profile one or two cosmetic giveaways, people will be forced to fend for themselves amid much lamenting of how bad things are elsewhere.

Having all - but abandoned his promise to reduce the cost of living, we expect him to shift his focus to jobs. How he will generate new jobs given the government’s programme set out in the Estimates remains a mystery, particularly when he faces the reality that the Estimates are based on false revenue earning projections.

And then there is the serious challenge of a rapid decline in our foreign reserves. All sorts of economic juggling have already been brought to bear on this issue. The fact remains that our international reserves has declined at such a rapid rate in such a short space of time. What will the Prime Minister do to earn more foreign currency short of borrowing even more money?

All in all the prospects for an imaginative but well reasoned Budget appear remote. For our part, our leader Mia Mottley and the other members of the Opposition will point out to Barbadians the areas where the Prime Minister could have done better, for make no mistake better could have been done last year and in the ensuing twelve months.

As a country we are slipping backwards at the hands of a government whose main occupation seems to be the investment of state resources in projects designed to ensure its longevity in office. Can anyone name a single original achievement of this government in the past sixteen months other than the Constituency Councils? And even these are not yet on stream. But wait … they are going to turn around Nelson yet again.

We face far more serious issues ahead of us. We are not prepared to go back.

Are you?
Back To Weekly Columns