The Prime Minister will present his budget on Friday and tonight, technicians in the Ministry of Finance are in their very last stages of preparation. With government in the grips of austerity, and with a looming debt crisis, the budget isn't expected to have any plums, but it will see the government boasting that it has brought down the overall fiscal deficit to about 4.5% of GDP. It's still a ways off from the 3.7% government promised to the IMF, but it is an accomplishment. Under the Fonseca finance regime in 2002 it ballooned to 9%, even though government never admitted publicly to that figure.
But before government gets too excited about its only reasonably oversized budget, it has some answering to do to the Chamber of Commerce. Yesterday, the Chamber sent a scolding letter to the Prime Minister complaining that he has failed to comply with the rules of the new Finance and Audit Reform Act, recently introduced by government as a transparency and governance tool.
Well, new tool, new rules, but same old practice according to the Chamber. The Chamber's letter complains that the Accountant General's office has failed to provide audited accounts to government before the close of the fiscal year, as is required in the Act. Without that audit having been provided and presented, the Chamber complains that the figures cited by the Prime Minister in his budget on Friday will lack credibility.
