Budget day tomorrow
Editorial
Stabroek News
March 27, 2003
At a time when citizens are beset by blackouts, when there are concerns about the water supply if it doesn't rain and the safety of the conservancy dam if it does, one suspects that the average citizen hasn't given much thought to tomorrow's budget. Apart from anything else recent budgets have been pretty anodyne affairs with no new taxes, and one suspects it will be the same again. Given the prescriptions of the international financial institutions and the terms of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility there is not a great deal of room for manoeuvring.
One change that is widely expected is an increase in the tax threshold. There has been no increase for several years.
Will the Minister of Finance offer any stimulus for investment? New jobs are urgently needed. The good news is that despite what might seem to the person who lives in Georgetown and its environs an irredeemably desperate situation plagued with kidnappings, murders and other crimes there have in fact been significant investments in the past year, particularly in the area of food processing. In the seafood sector, there were investments in excess of US$30 million and Guyana now has four of the biggest fish processing and exporting firms in the Caribbean. There have been major investments in the poultry sector and not only will the local market be fully supplied by local producers but it is very likely that the biggest producers will soon be looking for export markets. In the wood industry there are over 20 new projects in train including a plant for the production of shingles at the old glass factory site, and there are several new projects in the area of tourism. This is surely an area in which the prospects for eco-tourist developments are still considerable, despite the current financial crisis at Iwokrama which is of course not a commercial enterprise. In the information technology sector there are also several projects in train with a total projected investment of close to a billion dollars.
Guysuco produced 331 tonnes of sugar last year and is aiming at 340,000 tonnes this year. All estates lowered their cost of production as yields increased. More than 75,000 tonnes were sold in the Caribbean. It was a good year and site preparation work for the new factory at Skeldon should be completed by the end of April. The only major cloud on the horizon was the challenge by Australia and Brazil to the preferential price in the European Union.
What will the Minister of Finance have to say about crime? The apparently never-ending crime wave in which criminals continue to strike with impunity has cast a blight over the life of citizens. More people are leaving, including many with marketable skills and after one year government and the security forces are still to craft a credible plan. The continuing crime will continue to affect the economy. What happened to the increased expenditure we had heard about?
Will the Minister say anything about the electricity crisis and the talks with the main shareholder? This too is a very negative factor for development.
Does the Minister have contingency plans to deal with any adverse developments that may flow from the war in Iraq? Certainly he will be expected to say something on the provisions that have been made for oil supplies, given ongoing production problems in Venezuela which had declared force majeure on supply contracts.
And what about education, where teachers are on strike, and the civil service? These are of course difficult times for the whole nation and a sense of reality is needed on all sides but the minister will surely have something to say on these issues.
So though the budget will hardly be as significant as it usually is, especially given the opposition boycott of parliament, there are some important issues for the minister to deal with.
