Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley yesterday responded to Finance Minister Larry Howai's $61.3b budget presentation. Howai unveiled the fiscal package on Monday during a two-hour speech. Rowley, whose response has criticised the Government for abandoning several projects initiated under the PNM administration and announced a new development plan, Vision 2030, to take the country forward. Today, we begin publishing his speech.
Budget 2013/14–In search of a government,in need of a plan
Mr Speaker, let me begin by taking this opportunity to welcome you back from your trip to South Africa and to formally acknowledge for the first time all of the re-re-re-shuffled ministers. At an earlier time re-alignment referred to rotating old worn tyres, but in an effort to deceive, it now means reshuffle but it still applies to old worn tyres.
Among the data provided in the Review of the Economy is information which states that milk production has gone up by 7.1 per cent.It also states that honey production has gone up by 36.4 per cent. Based on these bare statistics alone, it is possible to conclude that this is the land of milk and honey.The Government would love for us to believe that especially when we see that chicken production has gone up by 92 per cent.
It matters not to them that the price of chicken is $13 per lb, there's a poultry shortage and the minister is currently meeting with suppliers trying to find out how to cope with the problem, all the while hoping that the population does not notice.I tell you this, Mr Speaker, so that you will appreciate that the real story lies in the bigger picture which is usually hidden from or misrepresented to you.
Mr Speaker, I have listened to this budget presentation, the largest budget in our nation's history, $61 billion–but when it ended there was something very unsettling about it.
Mr Speaker the PNM spent in
2006 $34 billion
2007 $38 billion
2008 $42 billion
2009 $44 billion
As I recall the economy was buoyant and healthy, optimism and confidence was at a peak. I recall that there was a harmonised choir of UNC/COP singing a hymn, that the PNM was spending too much, we were overheating the economy and forcing the private sector to compete for goods and labour at prices that only the Government could afford.
Mr Speaker, I want to point out that in these years, on average, the PNM spent, on average, $43 billion per year. This Government has been spending, on average, $53 billion per year since its arrival in 2010.Moreover, Mr Speaker, during the previous PNM period, there were patently visible signs of development for all to see and benefit from, and even to argue about.
The Hyatt Waterfront Hotel, which they all so much love now, NAPA, SAPA, the University of T&T (UTT), a number of secondary schools, industrial parks, flyovers, new roads, these very waterfront towers in which the Parliament is located and over which there are ministerial dogfights for executive office spaces and reserved parking. Mr Speaker, there were also major initiatives in crime suppression ultimately eliminating daily kidnappings for ransom.
We ordered, and paid for OPVs. There was a SAUTT assisted by experienced Scotland Yard officers. There was the introduction of Gate and a series of training programmes aimed at targeting and integrating youth from all walks and educational levels into the workforce, away from crime and hopelessness and into a worthwhile future.
We introduced C-DAP and a range of social support systems to benefit the needy. The bus service was expanded; the water taxi service was introduced. The mass transit system was taking shape.Fast ferries were purchased and operated, permanently changing the connection between Trinidad and Tobago. Twenty thousand housing units were at various stages of construction from start up to completion, with new occupancies a daily occurrence.
Billions were spent developing comprehensive infrastructure on Caroni raw lands to convert them into high-quality housing lots for former Caroni workers, as well as infrastructure for allowing farming plots to be accessed by beneficiaries who were to become self-employed farmers instead of employees of the State dependent on the failed sugar estate. That is what the taxpayer was getting at $43 billion per year with the PNM.
At the same time the PNM was being accused of profligacy and wild spending and not saving enough of our oil and gas windfall even as we saved over $9 billion in the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund and had an additional $3 billion in the Central Bank. The taxpayers, at $43 billion a year, even when they disagreed with some of the choices or the priorities, had the ability to talk about specific plans, projects and proposals that the PNM was articulating and executing.
They were able to join in national debate on the direction and progress of the development agenda because, Mr Speaker, we had one. Forty-three billion dollars per year, Mr Speaker, this is what the PNM was doing at $43 billion.We have today the fourth budget of this People's Partnership Government, again, the largest in the nation's history, at $60 billion.Last year was also $60 billion (with variations included) and the budget before that was $54 billion, to total $170 billion plus.
This is a Government that is spending $13 billion every year, over and above what the PNM did in the years when the economy was overheating and there was supposed to be "overspending."Now, Mr Speaker, let's think about it: what you just heard was a small part of what the PNM was doing with $43 billion per year, but what is this UNC coalition doing with $60 billion? What are we seeing?
What plans and projects could we credibly point to? What are we getting for this record-breaking expenditure, which, incidentally, is accompanied by record-breaking debt accumulation?What could we debate other than to ask what have they done with our $160 billion in 40 months?That is, Mr Speaker, $4 billion per month on a small nation of 1.3 million people, yet there is so much unhappiness, cynicism and despair, largely because our affairs are not being properly managed. How is it that they are spending
$13 billion more per year than the PNM in the years that we were being accused of profligacy and they have nothing significant to show the taxpayers for it? Only a lot of talk. A lot of talk and dizzying allegations of runaway corruption at the very highest levels, on a scale that boggles the mind. Now I'm sure there will be a grand bramble offered to us in the rebuttal from the other side to excuse their complete failure as administrators.
We will get their drivel as to why $20 billion passing through the hands of four Ministers of National Security was not enough to alleviate the crime scourge, after wholescale dismantling and cancelling of everything the PNM had in train. I'm sure they will do their utmost to try to spin and confuse us with bull turds and statistics and try to blame the PNM for every aspect of their ineptitude, bad mind and general misconduct.
But Mr Speaker, the time for that is done, the People's Partnership honeymoon is long over and we are now in the throes of a bitter and acrimonious divorce. We are fed up of how the experiment with their political instability is a drag on the economy and a major distraction to our people. It saps our confidence and irritates us on a daily basis.
So now in addition to the global headwinds we face–shaky commodity prices, weak local and foreign investments, weakness in major economies of our trading blocks, the arrival of competitive shale gas–we now have the predicted instability of our collapsing coalition Government to add to all these economic downside risks.
This is the reality. These are the facts. Mr Speaker, in 2010 there were six issues before this country in the political debate of a snap election within which this Government sought and obtained a handsome mandate.
It is against that background that we must now examine and evaluate our current predicament.
The issues on which this Government won its mandate were:-
1. Crime
2. Property Tax
3. Excessive Expenditure
4. Udecott and perception of corruption in a state enterprise
5. Procurement and use of Chinese over local contractors in government-to-government arrangements for state contracts
6. Internal problems in the ruling party. Rowley and Manning were arguing over Udecott, one state enterprise out of 89.
Compare then with now, Mr Speaker. On all fronts it is tea party versus World War III, on every count. All the hope and promise of an improvement have turned out to be an illusion, a mirage.
We jumped from a warm frying pan into an expensive hell fire where, political sniping, open guerrilla warfare, Cabinet instability, incompetence and corruption are the hallmarks of our "new politics."Mr Speaker, before I go further I must address the introduction of the property tax. Mr Speaker, a very wise political philosopher and one of the founding fathers of the USA, Benjamin Franklin, said: "One of the most exquisite follies of man is wisdom spun too thin."
Mr Speaker, the taxpayers and citizens of this country are growing wiser and are maturing politically. No matter how this failed Government tries to spin, rename, rebrand, reposition, or just sound plain foolish, what they are reintroducing, is a property tax.The taxpayers all know it. The Guardian knows it, that is why having heard the Minister of Finance, they published, "Property tax back in three phases."
Mr Speaker, I want to talk to the fundamental tenet of gaining a mandate from the people. Mr Speaker, I want to speak about when you take public platform, print T-shirts, pound the pavements, invoke fear and hysteria in the minds of home owners, farmers and pensioners in what we now confirm to have been duplicitous campaigning, aimed at nothing more than a vengeful bid for power.
You offered yourself to the people based on a premise and a promise of "no property tax," on the basis of competence and "new politics." You have absolutely no right to attempt to save yourself by designing a misleading potion, disguise it as healing medicine, then lie to the people about its curative value.Even after the mandate was obtained in September 2010 the leader of the pack was reaffirming "Read my lips, lipstick and all, no new taxes, including no property tax."
So rooted were they in their commitment that one minister, the member for D'Abadie/O'Meara, pledged that he would leave the party and the Parliament if property tax was introduced. I notice he is still here.
We watch in absolute astonishment now as the Prime Minister immediately contradicts the Minister of Finance in a vain attempt to save herself, and her Government by talking about going back to old land and building taxes values when the minister has long gone on to accepting and stating that we are at the point of new valuations to come.
I just want the population to know that the value that will be put on your property has nothing to do with who you vote for or which Government is in office. I also want to remind you that the property tax that faced the axe had called for a rate of 3.5 per cent on residential property, whereas the bill that was laid in Parliament by this coalition, under the cover of Carnival 2011, by the axeman and his partners, had called for valuations and a rate of 7.5 per cent on residential property. It was only stopped and allowed to lapse when the PNM raised the alarm on the betrayal.
The COP's actions today patently confirm to all that they have, once again, betrayed, in a most truculent way, the mandate they were given. They falsely advertised in what is the second greatest "bait and switch" political fraud ever perpetrated on T&T. Second only to Kamla Persad-Bissessar's so-called People's Partnership, the ultimate sinking ship itself.
This Government squandered its mandate and the trust of the people with the Section 34 misconduct. With the Prime Minister repeating over and over in July and September 2010 that her Government will not introduce property tax.The tomfoolery presented here by the Minister of Finance deserves no less than total condemnation and like all governments who betray the people's trust, in the name of God, go.
Mr Speaker, if there ever was a towering monument to the irrelevance of the COP in the coalition, this is it, and the absence of political integrity of the leaders of the COP, this is it. It is shameful and it is a great enough fraud promulgated on the voters that you should vacate your seats here and go tell the same people on the same public platforms, on the same pavements, wearing new T-shirts saying, "Here comes the tax, we deserve the axe. We have been recalled."
The population must try and calculate the hundreds of millions of dollars being left uncollected, for the benefit of commercial property owners, many of whom earn millions of dollars per year from the said Government who is playing politics to save itself at the expense of the taxpayers.
Under the rubric of tax administration the Hon Minister of Finance said, "We have started work on the technical infrastructure for the phased introduction of a growth-oriented tax system over the period 2014-2016." He went on to say, "This revised tax system will be regionally and internationally competitive."
What will be its local characteristics other than meshing with the return of the property tax as outlined for the same period? We don't know, and given your disgusting behaviour with the property tax we have little basis to trust you. We want the policy details now and the Government's clear intentions in writing: put a document out and let us see it. Like the property tax, which is straddling the general election of 2015, what is the Government threatening us with here?
After condemning and stopping the PNM's attempt to establish a much needed Revenue Authority, after wasting time, almost four years later, we now hear from the Minister of Finance: "The leakage from the tax system is unacceptable." He also mentioned "strengthening the capabilities of the Board of Inland Revenue, in particular in the area of enforcement and compliance in business and individual taxpayers' assessments."
This is precisely what the Revenue Authority, which you shot down, was meant to address. It took you three and a half years to admit this and to now embark on some piecemeal rectification. However, they would all still be foolishly saying ,"it is not the same thing. That was the PNM thing and this is we own."
�2 To be continued in the Sunday Guardian