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Early budget leaves room for greater abuse – Jagdeo

The presentation of an early budget is not as glorious as the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) claims; it in fact leaves room for greater abuse of Government spending.

In continuing to mount opposition against the presentation of an early budget, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo argued that the early budget puts the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) parliamentarians at a major disadvantage when debating the financial expenditures of the government in the National Assembly.
“There is nothing unique about this early budget. It just puts us in a difficult position because we are not going to have actual figures; puts us at a severe disadvantage to scrutinise the budget the way it should be,” he told a recent news conference.
Budget 2017 will be laid in the National Assembly by Finance Minister Winston Jordan on November 28.

Therefore, the administration would have to prepare estimates of what will be spent in the days after the presentation of the budget until the end of the fiscal year, December 31.
“So they will have actual expenditures up to just before they go to print and an estimate of what is to be spent between 20 November, or whenever they decide, to December 31. This now leaves room for greater abuse and I think this is one of the reasons why they are bringing an early budget,” Jagdeo explained.
The Opposition Leader asserted that there will be a month of “basically the Government being able to do what it wants because it would have come to Parliament with a figure but that figure would have had projections.”
He outlined that: “I could be arguing about a shortfall in revenue and then in December you have a surge in revenue or I could be praising the Government for meeting all of the fiscal criteria, meeting the target on fiscal deficit, then in December you have a huge expenditure or a revenue position that falls short of what was projected for December and you have a bigger deficit. So I will never be able to debate that in the Parliament.”
Former Junior Finance Minister Juan Edghill had expressed his belief that government’s early budget presentation was a means of evading public scrutiny: “We are very concerned if this is another three-card trick that is being played out in the public where we are going to be duped. Is this another form of corruption to hide underperformance and create opportunities for greater levels of corruption….?”
Edghill maintained that there was no haste for an early budget presentation, noting that historically, the country’s budget was presented in the first quarter of the fiscal year. He noted too that there were already mechanisms in place for the interim spending of the Government, which is 1/12 of the previous budget, until the new budget is presented and passed.