Michelle Loubon

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP and for­mer so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne says "no sense of new di­rec­tion" was present in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. Browne made the com­ment short­ly af­ter Dook­er­an pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day's 2010/2011 pack­age themed–Fac­ing The Is­sues: Turn­ing the Econ­o­my Around; Part­ner­ing With All Our Peo­ple. The bud­get was set at a re­al GDP growth of two per cent, an av­er­age in­fla­tion rate of 7 per cent, an oil price of US $65 per bar­rel and a gas price of US$2.75 per mmb­tu.

Ac­cord­ing to the draft es­ti­mates of ex­pen­di­ture, the to­tal es­ti­mates in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment is ex­pect­ed to be $3,357,097,340. Browne said: "I am dis­ap­point­ed es­pe­cial­ly in Dook­er­an for his pur­port­ed eco­nom­ic mind. He failed to pro­vide a sense of new di­rec­tion. I think that was ab­sent in the bud­get." "He did noth­ing to re­pair the dam­age. He did noth­ing to re­pair the con­fi­dence of the in­vestors. All the phras­es about the econ­o­my be­ing in sham­bles on­ly brings with it self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy."

"What ap­pears to be the new deficit is close to $8 bil­lion." Browne added: "He did not pro­vide us with a map for the eco­nom­ic fu­ture of T&T." He wished Dook­er­an well in his "eco­nom­ic fu­ture" since the coun­try is "de­pend­ing up­on ex­tract­ing some eco­nom­ic val­ue from the bud­get."

2011 So­cial De­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives

Ex­am­ine pro­pos­als to rein­te­grate ex pris­on­ers, de­por­tees and delin­quent youth in­to the fab­ric of main­stream so­ci­ety.

Es­tab­lish a youth men­tor­ing pro­gramme.

Re­view­ing so­cial pro­grammes to re­duce the num­ber of poor by two per cent each year.

A con­cert­ed ef­fort to en­sure spend­ing on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive and de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes are bal­anced with sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments to build so­cial cap­i­tal.

Milk feed­ing pro­gramme will be in­tro­duced to com­ple­ment the Na­tion­al School Feed­ing Pro­gramme to en­sure vul­ner­a­ble groups in the pop­u­la­tion are pro­vid­ed with the ba­sic nu­tri­tion with­in the home. The pro­gramme will sup­ply milk to all health cen­tres to nu­tri­tion­al­ly vul­ner­a­ble or at-risk peo­ple. Oth­er ben­e­fi­cia­ries will in­clude the pa­tients of Child Wel­fare Clin­ics and an­te­na­tal moth­ers.

Homes for the aged will be re­quired to meet and main­tain min­i­mum cri­te­ria and stan­dards of care for res­i­dents. The gov­ern­ment will al­so launch the El­der­ly Mo­bile Shut­tle ser­vice in 2011.