Arthur’s caution

Article by
Gercine Carter

Barbados will face an even deeper fiscal crisis if Government’s Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for the financial year 2011-12 just laid before the House of Assembly are approved.
The warning was given today by Leader of the Opposition Owen Arthur. who said the Government was “not following the processes and the prescriptions outlined in its own medium term fiscal strategy, nor was it “following any processes nor prescriptions outlined in any other clearly defined fiscal strategy for this country that offers the hope of a pathway out of the financial morass that is rapidly overcoming our national economy.”
Arthur argued the financial programme contained in the Estimates put the public finances  “merely in a holding pattern, and he complained that government had not engaged in a “process of engagement”  with the Opposition.
Such engagement he said would have “allowed us to see these Estimates in advance, sit with the best minds in the country, and put together a programme not just for consolidation, but for transformation of Barbados.”