The Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals 2010, to be presented by the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, The Honourable Chris Sinckler on Monday, November 22, 2010, in the House of Assembly of the Parliament of Barbados, are among the most anticipated in recent memory.

As it stands now, the Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals are coming at a very crucial time in the historical development of Barbados, when the country totters on the brink of a social political economic precipice.

For, Barbados has already recorded about 2 3/4 years straight of political economic depression, massive debt profiles of persons and businesses in the personal and private sectors, and of the government in the public sector, and has already recorded a fall in the United Nations Human Development Index.

What are required right now are some serious far-reaching people centered measures to take the country forward deeper into the 21 st Century.

PDC

To say the lease, this is a very exciting period in our politics with all that has recently happen and soon to happen. Wunna political yardfowls got nuff scratch grain tuh feed pun.

One year ago the Jamaica government made the following announcement regarding the reduction of its government’s expenditure:
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KINGSTON, Jamaica, November 9, 2009 – A special team will go into operation a week from now in Jamaica to lead the government effort to cut jobs and otherwise rationalise the public service.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding said that under the rationalisation plan, government jobs will be lost as the Golding administration seeks to cut costs, and the public sector will be modernised to improve efficiency.
The effort will see some of the existing 200 government departments merged and others closed.
“We are going to have to rein in this sprawling, expensive apparatus that we call Government,” the Prime Minister said.
“We will be driving that process out of the Cabinet Office and we’re going to start rolling that out in about April 2010,” he added. “It is going to take us about 18 months. That’s the target I’ve given them.”
He said the aim is to ease the burden on the country’s Budget so that borrowing is reduced.
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I believe that the same is necessary for Barbados. The many departments and ministries overlap; waste is rampant; productivity is very low as operational costs keep rising. Added to this are the costs of the various semi-government corporations, boards etc which should be run as businesses but are not.

I see none of the political parties really talking about drastically REDUCING government expenditure and operations as this is political suicide – especially for a DLP govt… remember the 8% political football?

So the Barbados government, irrespective of party, and Barbadians will continue to ignore the reality that they are living beyond their means. Their lifestyle of ostentatious consumption and waste (BMW’s and SUV’ as govt vehicles); their management and work habits (amazingly inefficient) will have to change real fast or I see no sustainable future for our country.

The world is changing fast and competition is growing all around in a connected world… we are still asleep, but we talk the talk real well! ….. The King is naked, folks!

Ecoanalyst
A truly patriotic Prime Minister, is going to have to sacrifice or put his/her political future on the line and make some drastic decisions
to save this country. Bajans are living care free, not accepting the crisis that we are in and when someone is bold enough to talk about it, you’re called a prophet of doom and bloom. It is not me who caused the situation to be like this, it has happened because over the years bajans were made to believe that they are living in a Utopian country. Well one day the truth will catch up with us and i think that day has come. Brace yourself for an austery budget if this government is serious about getting this country out of the mess we’re in.

King Arthur, “The Economist” has got us in this mess. However, people still think he is their saviour… It was the deficit economics and borrowings and government expansion and waste during his long tenure that has us where we are now. He should be banished from the Kingdom…

Keynesian economics suggests deficit financing to boost economies in bad times… However, he used them all through his reign, with big borrowings and unbalanced budgets… so now we have to pay those bills.

In the USA, Obama is being blamed for the job losses and slow recovery after the economic crash caused by Bush and the Republicans and their cohorts on Wall Street. Bush spent Clinton’s $2 trillion treasury and added another 4 trillion in debt during his 8 years. People have short memories and now Bush is selling a book and has a 44% popularity rating… Imagine that!
here in Barbados we have a similar situation. They have short memories. King Arthur has destroyed the economy by running deficits rather than surpluses in the “good times”. As an economist he should know that economies run in cycles and the bad times would eventually be here… like they are now.
Now the DLP, like Obama’s Democrats, have to try and manage the chaos left by the previous administration with piles up debts to pay and falling income due to the world’s economic downturn.

Added to that they are burdened with a civil service that is not civil but overblown and moribund with red tape. That is the reality… those government guys think they have “security” and they do compared to many of us. But there will come a day when the country can no longer afford many of them, their travels big rides and waste.

Like in Jamaica, the U.K. and other countries, that day has arrived where government has to be drastically downsized …. but who will tell it as it is … for it could be political suicide.

Why does this 166 sq mile country need over 30,000 civil servants and related government employees???

Scout
I am now 100% certain that you do not know if to hop or jump.
Hear yourself “It is not me who caused the situation to be like this, it has happened because over the years bajans were made to believe that they are living in a Utopian country.”
You keep pushing Owen Arthur as the saviour but it was he as Ecoanlyst pointed out was the chief culprit who led Bajans to believe that they can have a car in every garage. He borrowed for us to live this lie of a lavish lifestyle. He allowed his friends to cause cost overruns on every aspect of Government projects.
When persons say that he presided over a time of growth and prosperity, no one mentions the massive debt that resulted from that period.
You may like him but you cannot have it both ways, you can praise him for the prosperous time but you must also blame him for the massive debt he left behind.

@Bush Tea
Is that your dog in caption. Is the dog a german shepherd. Very interesting to read the dog’s opinion on the economy. The dog gives true meaning to”A real political Animal”.

Now what could be done with CBC …? hmmm. I will never propose that it should there should be another television station, for that would be result in just another opportunity for some private entity to vent foreign exchange…

What could be done with the Fair Trading Commission ?

Why should there be a whole office dedicated to the Prime Minister?

Why do we need an Ambassador in China

It is amazing the nonsense that is being spouted to raise revenue. For example, the Nation quotes an ‘economist’ Mr.Holder, as one of the methods ‘Holder proposed that to raise the $100 million in revenues, Government should impose a temporary stabilisation tax on incomes and profit, which could raise at least $60 million, and $15 million from permanent increases in non-tax revenue fees and charges.’

Stabilisation tax on incomes and profit????? Which itself is a recessionary act. Persons who have their incomes cut, will cut spending on eating out, on lawn services, fire help etc. To tax profits in a recession, when income is already cut is idiotic.

As for ‘fari and balance views above, a few are okay, but as mentioned, increasing direct tax on incomes is recessionary and will only serve to bring in a small am0unt, not solve the issue, it will be punitive rather than assist in addressing the fiscal deficit.

The ONLY effective method, as I have stated previously many times over the last year (which is when the Government should have acted, but they were too busy keeping people ‘happy’), is to increase the VAT rate.

Sorry, there is no other solution, do it now or next year, or the year after, but it will have to be done.

If the Government do not increase the VAT now, then they do not have the balls to run this country.

If they retain ‘piddle methods’ of tax collection, such as increasing this and that license feee, but ignore the big picture and most logical alternative, we can look forward to increased fiscal deficit, additional downgrade byh rating agencies (which means increased debt costs) and severe austerity measures in two /three years, if not sooner.

I said last year that they should increase VAT then, they did not, now we are looking at another train wreck.

If VAT is not increased, but direct tax is, it will clearly show incompetence and I for one will be on the Owen Arthur train for the next election. I am very serious.

I cannot stand ‘piddling about’ with the economy, such has happened over the last year. And I will not accept more of the same.

Loopk at it this way, now they are piddling with the drug service to save 2 million, when much more can be done by raising the VAT by tweo or three percent.

Instead pensioners and those who cannot afford treatment are
forking out. Do we need the amount of Ministries that we have?

Simple, increase VAT, cut specific Government costs and move on.

Hartley Henry deal wi’ image … Hartley Henry don’ deal wid sewage ….

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