A KARAOKE BUDGET! That is how Opposition Leader Mia Mottley has described the proposals laid by Prime Minister David Thompson.

Mottley said deficit financing was key to the Barbadian economy and not just balancing a Budget, since you had to undertake developmental financing. She said therefore she could not understand why this Government would question what the previous administration had borrowed money for.

She said the Barbados Labour Party Government had borrowed money for Hilton Barbados and the result was that, in its first year of operation, it gave the best performance of any other Hilton in the Americas.

"We borrowed money for the airport, Sir, recognising that the airport we had could no longer accommodate the numbers, and this Government through the Prime Minister yesterday acknowledged effectively that there was need for more airstrip capacity. It is just that he was satisfying a deal, clearly the one that will see in St Lucy an airstrip in circumstances where the airstrip at the airport for the private jets is not fully satisfying.

"We understand the motivation for why you would want to put an airstrip in St Lucy, having put the member for St Lucy out to sea in maritime affairs," she said.

The BLP leader said everyone within the monetary arena in the world, including the International Monetary Fund's new managing director, Dominique Strauss-Khan, said at the beginning of the year that if there was ever a time to run a fiscal deficit, it was now.

She said debt was dependent on the quality of the debt, and one should not undebt just for the sake of consumption – a point, she added, which Errol Barrow made and also one which the Washington consensus approach took.

"He has said that in response to the global crisis of credit and commodities that if ever there was a time for fiscal deficits it is now . . . When then you go and add to that the comments of the former US Treasury Secretary Larry [Lawrence] Sumners, and I quote, Sir: 'This is the first time in 25 years that the IMF managing director has called for an increase in fiscal deficits and I regard this as a recognition of the gravity of the situation that we face'."

Mottley said Thompson should stop passing off his duties as Prime Minister to the members of his frontbench, as well as "jet-setting and jetskiing too much" and attend to the people's business. (WB)