Billions for food, rent, travel in budget but investment in critical sectors static –Jagdeo
Highlighting “massive” increases in funding for food, rent and travel, among other “non-essential” areas in the 2019 Budget, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has accused the government of paying less attention to more critical areas such as health.
Dietary, local travel and subsistence, and goods and services are among ten “non-essential and non-productive” areas accounting for $13.5 billion in the national budget which have seen “massive” funding for these in 2019 compared to the 2014 budget passed by the PPP/C government, Jagdeo said. Speaking at his weekly press conference at his Queenstown office on Thursday, the former President said the budget continues the trend “to massively increase massive recurrent expenditure” with very little increase on capital expenditure, particularly essential services like health and public security.
While Finance Minister Winston Jordan boasted about the 2019 Budget being the largest ever, Jagdeo said, “When you examine it, you will see it is mainly the recurring side of the budget.”
Among the areas highlighted by Jagdeo where expenditure increased by millions and billions of dollars compared to 2014, were the celebration of national events which increased from $434 million in 2014 to $675 million for next year.
“Dietary has now gone up to $2.203 billion a year than was spent in 2014,” he added but did not provide comparative figures for 2014. Other “amorphous” operating expenses have increased by $1 billion from 2014, Jagdeo said. Also increasing for the same period were local travel and subsistence minus foreign travel by $1 billion, vehicles’ spares by $645 million, other transport travel and postage by $519 million and rental of buildings by $827 million.
Security services, Jagdeo said, has gone up by $2.176 billion. “This figure is significant because many government ministers and their cohorts have incorporated security firms,” he said.
Equipment maintenance has gone up by $595 million more than in 2014 while other categories under goods and other purchases have gone up by $3.397 billion a year.
“Combined, this gives $13.5 billion increase in ten areas I consider not essential,” Jagdeo asserted.
He also pointed out that excluding the administrative regions, drugs and medical supplies budgeted for in 2014 was $5.138 billion and for 2019, the allocation was reduced to $5.121 billion.
In terms of capital expenditure, excluding the administrative regions, Jagdeo said, total capital expenditure allocated for public security, health and education have gone up by only $4.6 billion between 2014 and 2019. The capital expenditure from 2014 to 2019 in public security went up by $1.5 billion; health, $1.6 billion and education, $1.5 billion.
“Guess what? We only could have spent $4.6 billion more between 2014 and now. We are spending almost more than that on just goods and other purchases. That has increased phenomenally,” he said.
Urging Guyanese to go behind the numbers, Jagdeo said, “That’s where you will see the extravagance, the profligacy, the duplicity of this government. They prefer to spend more on eating, on rental of building, on vehicles spares, on travel, than on public security, education and health care and drugs purchases.”
Under policy development and administration, Jagdeo said, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs in 2017 was allocated $1.331 billion; in 2018, $1.183 billion and for 2019, this has fallen to $815 million. “It has gone down by more than $500 million from 2017,” he observed.
The Ministry of Agriculture, he noted, was allocated $4.6 billion for capital expenditure, and in 2109, $4.614 billion. “What is interesting is that $1.8 billion of the $4.6 billion will be coming in from foreign sources.”
The Ministry of Public Works in 2017, he said, got $29.3 billion for capital expenditure; in 2018, $24.1 billion; and for next year, $26 billion. “All the talks about massive infrastructural projects. They had $29 billion in 2017, and they have fallen to $26 billion now, although the budget has increased by $30-odd billion,” he said.
Jagdeo observed that the Ministry of Education is the only one seeing a bit of growth. “It moves from $2.8 billion to $3.7 billion, about $900 million increase for policy development and administration, training and development, nursery education, primary, secondary, post-secondary and tertiary education.”
Child care and protection in 2018, he said, had an allocation of $165 million and in 2019, $80 million for capital works. The Ministry of Public Security had $3.4 billion in 2017, $3.1 billion in 2018 and $3.8 billion for 2019. This Ministry, he said, has received less than the increase in local travel and subsistence.
The total capital increase for the ten regions, he said, has been $1.42 billion for regional administration, health, agriculture and public infrastructure.
Comparing allocations to the Prime
Minister’s Secretariat, Jagdeo said in 2013, it was allocated $6.2 million and in 2014, $4.1 million. In 2015, it was allocated $102 million; 2016, $156 million; in 2017, $295 million; in 2018, $145 million and for 2019, $149 million.
“This Prime Minister would have (been assigned) nearly $848 million through his Secretariat compared to Prime Minister Samuel Hinds spending about $30 million in five years,” Jagdeo declared.
In terms of the development of roads and other infrastructural projects in 2019, Jagdeo said none will be built as they remain feasibility studies and some of the projects, including the Linden/Soesdyke highway, the upgrade of the Linden aerodrome and the upgrade of the Lethem aerodrome, may end up not being feasible. This includes the road from Mabura to Lethem with which the government is in discussions with the Brazilian government. “That discussion could take 20 years. We had those discussions too,” he said.
The bypass road from Diamond to Ogle may not begin, according to Jagdeo, who said that the US$50 million project left by the PPP/C government is now pegged at US$120 and government is seeking additional funding.
The extension of the East Coast Demerara Road to Mahaica for which Government is in discussions with the Islamic Development Bank, he said, “is not going to happen in 2019 and not in 2020.”
On the four-lane high-span bridge across the Demerara River for which Government has invited the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to revise the terms of reference, Jagdeo said, “If the first feasibility study was barely feasible with substantial public support for a three-lane bridge that was not a high-span, I do not think that the CDB will want to touch this bridge with a long stick as it is so mired in corruption given what went to the Public Procurement Commission. It is not going to happen.”