Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure are just that: statements of intent as to how-much government plans or wishes to earn and spend, usually on the basis of hopefully earning more than or enough to spend.
But it’s more of the other-way-round in Saint Lucia and other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member-states, including Guyana which still has to borrow from regional and international banking institutions.
In today’s context of developing and small-island nations globally suffering more Loss and Damage from accelerated Climate Change and Regime Change, when rich nations’ aid budgets are being cut and military expenditure continues to rise, when even the United Nations (UN) is handing-out begging bowls for humanitarian causes in the face of the rich simply getting richer and the poor poorer, it’s always necessary to not only measure budgeted estimates by numbers, but also by the factors that attend annual preparation and delivery of each by every Finance Minister and/or Prime Minister.
PMs Philip J. Pierre and Michael Pilgrim are the only two Prime Ministers of Saint Lucia who lived by the numbers in the accounting profession and this prime minister can easily swim safely through any flood of numbers to make dollars make sense.
His first two budget presentations came-to-grips with the messy financial position inherited, paying-up on the biggest foreign and domestic debt any government has had to handle, restoring confidence in government finances while easing public burdens, finding ways and means to subsidize food and fuel costs and allocate more to human and social services, paying outstanding public service salaries – and all the other regular monthly government bills.
The St. Jude Hospital, George Odlum Stadium and International Airport projects in Vieux Fort have been rescued, even though at great cost, while those responsible continue to talk by day and dream by night, their costly machinations being exposed every time the Prime Minister or Minister for Infrastructure have to update the nation on those projects, no matter of how Saint Lucian taxpayers were bled mercilessly by a government ran by a reckless wrecking crew.
After two years and nine months under the stewardship of this prime minister, investors are coming again and locals and there’s more interest in investing in Government Bonds.
But the rejected opposition, unable to purchase relevancy, continues to dream of and imagine Alice in Wonderland suddenly waving a magic wand to save a sinking yellow submarine.
However, colourful or dull adjectives apart, while the opposition continues inventing Fake News about the island’s Citizenship by Investment Policy (CIP), it’s been unable to (yet) find words and ways to believably challenge the revelation (by one agency in the business of weighing related benefits globally) that Saint Lucia’s CIP is third-best in the world today – under this administration.
The traditional accountant in Finance Minister Pierre sifts much-more through the figures that came out of weeks and months of daily budget consultations, depending on his old toolbox comprising (apart from the reams and stored online files of documented reports and recommendations): a fine-tooth comb, a fine-point lead pencil, red-black-and-blue ball-point pens, a ruler, blank and ruled paper pads – and carefully-selected natural hibernation potions and portions.
He then goes into the annual exile of solitary confinement to daily design the relevant tables and pen his line-item budget-address points, to be converted to power-point charts.
PM Pierre has made the budgeting business sound so easy, like PM Dr Kenny D. Anthony so-many-times did between 1997 and 2016 and who he so-well impressed and pleased as to select him as Deputy Prime Minister and trust him as an ever-loyal Deputy Leader.
Today, PM Pierre has the blessings and access to the guidance of Dr Anthony, both as a backbencher and Deputy Speaker of Parliament, alongside former PM and Finance Minister Stephenson King and with a cabinet intent on continuing to deliver on the ruling party’s election manifesto promises at every sitting of the House of Assembly.
But it’s never all as-easy-as what was seen and heard from PM Pierre last night…
Just imagine the number of migraine-sized headaches he will have had to curb to think of how and where to find the figures to translate into impactful projects or services in all constituencies and communities island-wide, to touch and assist the most-needy, to continue subsidizing prices – but in a nation where (like everywhere else) too-many believe it’s justifiable to fight ‘Hard Times’ by small-changing government.
Today, we hear partisan arguments offered to justify depriving the Treasury – from taxpayers who can afford to but still evade paying their share on earnings, to the business places that collect National Insurance Corporation (NIC) and Value Added Taxes (VAT) and don’t pay-up either, or profitable service providers that automatically transfer their VAT charges to customers and clients.
Too-many roadside vendors simply refuse to pay dues they can afford, while increasingly squeezing the public off sidewalks; too-many market vendors have grown too-accustomed to having their accumulated debts forgiven ahead of general elections; and too many tenants of Castries CDC buildings are abusing preferential access to apartments meant for housing to engage in profitable commercial enterprises.
More people prefer to pay for false drivers’ licenses, more importers refuse to pay full costs at Customs, some who can simply refuse to pay hospital bills, the Conway government car-park remains empty on Saturdays while drivers clog marketplace streets, the installed parking meters in the city remain as decorations, successful and admirable small enterprises in the car-washing business source their water from public standpipes – and property owners, like market vendors, simply await the next expected government incentive-to-pay through debt cancellation.
But instead of seeing and/or acknowledging the truths behind the numbers or facts behind the figures presented last night, the Opposition will simply prefer to continue to ‘Dingolay’ (parting hairs and spitting in the sky), while Prime Minister Pierre continues accounting for his government by showing the stark difference between Dollars and Sents and making dollars make sense.