Kevon Felmine

Al­though the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) is not to­tal­ly sat­is­fied with the 2017 Na­tion­al Bud­get, they are hap­py that the Gov­ern­ment did not an­nounce cuts in jobs and wages.

In fact, con­venor of JTUM Vin­cent Cabr­era said Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered Labour's Eco­nom­ic Al­ter­na­tive Plan, which they pre­sent­ed to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert last month. He said they were tak­ing cog­ni­sance of gov­ern­ment's "so­cial jus­tice" tax on in­come earn­ers of $1 mil­lion and up.

Al­so sit­ting well with JTUM was gov­ern­ment's thrust for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change as op­posed to strain­ing an al­ready bur­dened re­serve.

As for the in­crease in the ex­cise du­ty on to­bac­co and al­co­hol by 15 per cent and 20 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly, he doubts there would be much quar­rel for moral rea­sons.

"I think that all in all, it was not a Bud­get that re­al­ly came down on the peo­ple. A lot of peo­ple would have as­sumed that the min­is­ter may have come with cuts in em­ploy­ment lev­els and wages. He even talked about Sau­di Ara­bia who did that as a re­sponse to their own prob­lems re­cent­ly. "If he had done that, I would have ar­gued that you'd have to look at the lev­el of Sau­di's in­come be­cause maybe they could af­ford the cuts with their earn­ings so high. I'm say­ing that you have to look at the min­is­ter's po­si­tion in the con­text of the fi­nan­cial gap that ex­ists in terms of the fall in oil rev­enue," Cabr­era said.

He said the 15 per cent in­crease in diesel could lead to in­creased prices on most prod­ucts but Gov­ern­ment could ar­gue that it was a nec­es­sary means of clos­ing its fi­nan­cial gaps.

He said al­though they un­der­stood why Gov­ern­ment would use the pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship mod­el to fund projects, the JTUM was cau­tious about it and would do its own re­search.

He said JTUM will have crit­i­cisms of the Bud­get, but must first analyse it and give a de­tailed re­sponse in the com­ing days.

In wrap­ping up his three-hour speech, Im­bert said, "JTUM played a key role in the de­lib­er­a­tions and demon­strat­ed that they ful­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of eco­nom­ic growth. They sub­mit­ted a well-thought out and prac­ti­cal plan of ac­tion for stim­u­lat­ing key sec­tors of the econ­o­my, for achiev­ing so­cial eq­ui­ty and for di­ver­si­fy­ing away from de­pen­dence on oil, for which I es­pe­cial­ly thank them."