Prime Minister addresses Gov’s standpoint on austerity measures

IN defence of Government’s austerity measures announced in the 2017 Budget, Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Freundel Stuart is contending that sending home more public servants is not the answer to the problem.

Making his contribution to the Budget debate in the House of Assembly, on Thursday, Stuart acknowledged that over the last 18 months, there have been raging debates over the state of the country’s foreign reserves, the trajectory that the reserves were on, and the fiscal deficit occurring as a result of the global economic crisis.

He said the country has found itself in a position with spiralling expenditures in key sectors and also with dwindling revenues.

“There were subdued voices at first, but they have become louder in recent times, to send home public servants, and we have been told if you want to make serious gains in your expenditure cuts, you can’t limit the sending home to the people at the bottom.

“You have to go into the upper realms of the public service and start sending home them too. The Government of Barbados, led by me, has frowned on that advice. We do not feel that the workers of Barbados, certainly
the public workers of Barbados have created the problems that we are in and we do not see why they should be the burden bearers in the all of this,” Stuart said.

“Yes, they have to help us make some of the sacrifices that have to be made and they have been making sacrifices, but the solution to our problem is not to cut off a few thousand public officers, get our books to balance again, while we unleash a number of people to go out there in society and to have to fend for themselves in very difficult circumstances,” the Prime Minister added.

Stuart said his administration took a conscious decision not to have the major initiatives in the Budget, including the increase of the National Social Responsibility Levy and the introduction of a new sales tax on foreign currency transactions until July 1, in an effort to hear the comments from interest groups likely to be affected by the measures, to iron out any issues.

“We took a conscious decision to have the implementation begin on the July 1, so that we have between the June 1 and June 30 to consult, talk to people and so on, to see what their particular challenges are going to be, but that we can benefit from nine months of the measures once implemented. In that context, expect confidently, that there be less reliance on the Central Bank for financing or too much of it… ,” he said.

The country’s leader also affirmed that the “entitlement super structure built over the last 50 years, is now being maintained on a contracting infrastructure, and therefore the state has to make certain decisions” as it relates to funding key sectors, including education, health, housing and sanitation, among others; ensuring that the most vulnerable in society are shielded in the transition.

“Nobody ever says that any set of Budgetary Proposals partakes of anything called perfection. What we do is to analyse the situation before us and we try to respond as creatively and as sensitively as we can to the situation with which
we are confronted,” he said. (AH)