Opposition questions early Budget

According to well-placed sources, August 15 is the likely date on which Prime Minister Patrick Manning will present the Budget.

In his address at the second of the PNM’s educational tours at the Arima Senior Comprehensive School last Saturday, Manning said there is likely to be an early presentation of the Budget because Junior Finance Minister Conrad Enill and several technocrats involved in the preparation of the Budget would be out of the country at an International Monetary Fund (IMF) conference in September-October when the Budget is normally presented in Parliament.

Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday told Newsday he was not accepting the reasons offered by the Prime Minister at face value.

Panday said it was strange to present an early Budget given the fact that Government delivered a $27 billion Budget last year and only last month got parliamentary approval for an additional appropriation of $3 billion.

The UNC leader said most of the Budget’s preparatory work was done by civil servants, not Government ministers, and there was no reason why the Budget could not be presented within the usual period.

Panday claimed the early Budget was an attempt by Government to divert attention away from serious issues facing Trinidad and Tobago.

He further alleged that Government was going to Parliament to request additional funding and was not being accountable to the population about how that funding was being allocated.

Panday claimed the exclusion of certain entities from the Freedom of Information Act, meant it was increasingly difficult for the population to question Government about its expenditure patterns.

St Augustine MP Winston Dookeran said the reasons given by Manning for an early Budget were "not valid."

From his own recollection of the IMF’s workings, Dookeran said the meetings Manning referred to were "nothing unusual."

Dookeran said the only possible rationale for an early Budget could be "difficulties" experienced in the last fiscal year and Government wants to clean up the books.

Asked to explain what "difficulties" Government may have experienced, Dookeran suggested that Government might have encountered "a larger financing gap" than it originally anticipated, or some new expenditure it wanted to include in the upcoming Budget.

Dookeran said he believed there was disorder in Government’s fiscal planning strategies and this was highlighted in last Friday’s debate of a finance bill to deal with long-awaited reform of the nation’s oil and gas tax regime.