Britain's 2004 budget
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
March 19, 2004
"THE purpose of this Budget is to lock in for Great Britain the economic stability that can and will endure."
Thus began Britain's 2004 estimates, read in Parliament on Wednesday by Britain's financial czar.
As is legion, a myriad of responses greeted Mr. George Brown's eighth budget speech. But politicians and analysts alike concluded yesterday that the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered a win-win budget that was intended to influence votes in Britain's upcoming election.
That's interesting, because, as BBC online news reporter James Arnold surmised in his analysis, Is Brown right to wield the axe? "as making the country's ends meet becomes ever more of a struggle, it's little wonder that policy makers are looking at ways to tighten their belts - or rather, other people's."
As Arnold figured, "Reducing government waste has become an obsession of all sides of the political debate around this year's Budget. Last month, the Tories said they would slash £7bn off annual government running costs, resulting in an eventual £80bn pot to pour into tax cuts and better public services, and asked the public to send in their ideas to save money.
"Now, Chancellor Gordon Brown has unveiled a wave of cutbacks to the bureaucracy, arguing that public-sector efficiencies could unlock £20bn in annual economic value. It seems that waste and inefficiency is now the key battleground in the debate over the future of the public spending, with both political parties eager to discover costless savings they can use for to achieve their own goals."
The budget proposes axing 40,000 Whitehall or civil service jobs, deploying another 20,000 city-based civil servants to the regions, and reducing the staff of the Department of Work and Pensions by more than 30,000 over four years.
If what's about to happen in Britain were to take place in Guyana, some politicians and trade unionists would find Mr. Brown's budget proposals unpalatable, especially since the British economy grew by 2.3% in 2003, meeting Treasury forecasts, and Britain's unemployment figure was now 2.9 percent, the lowest figure since 1973.
So why, at a time when Britain is enjoying its longest period of economic growth since the Industrial Revolution, has Mr. Brown chosen to freeze a range of taxes and propose that all public sector departments "cut back room administration budgets by at least 5% by 2008" at a time when the UK is enjoying its longest period of economic growth since the Industrial Revolution?
We admire President Jagdeo's concern for the welfare of Guyana’s public servants, so much so that he has resisted proposals by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to slash jobs in the country's public service by about 1,000.
We nonetheless repeat our belief that the time is fast coming when the President will have to balance his genuine concern for public servants with the demands of the Guyanese people for a public capable of addressing the emergence of new demands from the business community and civil society.
As we said the last time we addressed the issue of public sector reform, "no government likes to send home workers. But even without the prompting of international donor agencies, government will have to consider options geared to bringing the public sector in line with results-oriented counterparts in, say, the United Kingdom."
With the government's 2004 budget due in a short while, we hope that the government, the trade unions representing public servants, and the workers themselves, will see efficient, results-oriented service to the Guyanese citizenry as paramount and sensibly address the issue of public service reform.