Trotman, Indar clash over 2020 budget
`It has taken good and special care of some interest groups, but left 90% of the people out altogether - particularly the working class and poor’
APNU+AFC MP Raphael Trotman and Minister in the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar yesterday clashed over the merits of Budget 2020 as debate on the long-delayed presentation began at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
While government ministers sought to convince the House that all Guyanese will benefit from the budget measures, members of the opposition argued that the “public” was neglected while special interest groups such as the private sector benefit.
“This budget has fallen woefully short of everyone’s expectations. It has taken good and special care of some interest groups, but left 90% of the people out altogether - particularly the working class and poor seeking to elevate themselves out of poverty,” former Minister of Natural Resources Trotman declared.
He endorsed the commentary in a recent interview of former Finance Minister Winston Jordan who described the budget as “deformed, defective, deceptive, divisive and discriminatory” and disputed claims that the treasury was empty.
“It is deformed because it sought to copy an APNU+AFC template and twisted it into deformity. It is defective because it failed to go to the full extent to remedy the maladies it was claimed to be addressing – COVID-19 and opening the economy. It is deceptive because there is nothing monumental or awesome about it. It is divisive because it seeks to punish or ignore groups that offer no political value to the government and it is discriminatory because it looks after cliques and specialinterest groups, and leaves out the vast majority of others,” Trotman charged.
He specifically noted that since the budget was delivered amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and social upheaval and tension within the country it was expected that it would have addressed cohesion, or the absence thereof, and the pandemic.
He highlighted the four-fold increase of the overall deficit from $17 billion in 2019 to $75 billion and questioned the absence of traditional measures.
“We know that there is now enough fiscal space to reduce VAT to 11%, why wasn’t it done? We know that pensions were to be raised to be half of the minimum wage, why was this cancelled? We know that public sector workers were slated for an increase, why were they penalised? We know that the Income Tax threshold was
to be increased, what happened?” Trotman questioned.
Describing the presented budget as visionless, Trotman recommended that government embrace the ten-point Decade of Development proposed by former President David Granger who is not among his coalition’s MPs in parliament.
“The PPP took over an economy that was described as the fastest growing in the hemisphere, if not in the world…for the past five years, there has been sustained and envious growth…We weren’t a `deh bad’ country that we used to be or some are trying to make it out to be,” he stressed, while asking where the PPP/C were able to find $329 billion if the trea
sury was empty.
“No Houdini or illusionist could conjure up a $330B budget if indeed the treasury was empty… Guyana under the Granger- led administration, and with Winston Jordan as Minister of Finance, experienced five straight years of sustained economic growth at an average of 3.6% of GDP,” Trotman declared.
Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar however disagreed with this assessment.
According to Indar under the approach laid out by the Irfaan Ali administration, citizens of all walks of life can be assured