And to get a sense of what line of attack the Opposition leader John Briceno will take in the debate, we spoke to him at the conclusion of today’s presentation. Not surprisingly, he was not at all impressed.
Hon. Johnny Briceno, PUP Leader
“My quick observation is that it is a hollow budget, I think the budget is still at ‘imagine the possibilities,’ because it is certainly not being spelt out in the budget.”
Jules Vasquez,
If you had to single out, you said it is hollow so I would imagine you think the short comings are many, but if you had to single out the greatest shortcoming in the budget, what would that be?
Hon. Johnny Briceno,
“Well before I go into that I think it is important to point out the good news. When the Prime Minister was in opposition he was constantly attacking the government on the budget and when the results it showed there was a primary surplus, there is a recurrent surplus, and even the deficit was just a little bit over 3% of GDP. So it has shown that what he was saying when he was in opposition was not so. But looking at budget, most of what we’re seeing there are projects or works that the previous government has been doing. Look at something that’s close to me, the sugar roads, the four point something million dollars that he has in his budget, that was negotiated by the previous government with the EU funding. The DFC, he has made much about the new funding for the DFC - that was work that had already been done by the previous government with both CDB and IDB.
I think it would have better if the Prime Minister had come to the National Assembly and be straightforward with the Belizean people and say things weren’t as bad as we were saying when we were in Opposition, we made a lot of promises when we were in opposition but now that we’re in government, now it is not as what we thought it was, it was not as bad and now because of the promises, because of the external forces, we cannot live up to all the commitments we made to the Belizean people on the 7th of February.”
And there’s more than just budget new from today’s House sitting. Later on we’ll tell you about the legislative strangle hold that the government is trying to put on BTL to force the phone company to pay its business tax.
