Shal­iza Has­sanali

In his first po­lit­i­cal speech to sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai yes­ter­day said his 2012/2013 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to­mor­row will fo­cus on key ar­eas-crime, re­duc­ing the food im­port bill, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion. Howai said the Gov­ern­ment was all about pro­vid­ing a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for all. He said he was com­mit­ted to work­ing with all sec­tors to grow the econ­o­my.

Howai made the an­nounce­ment at the PP's pre-bud­get ral­ly ti­tled An Ac­count to the Peo­ple yes­ter­day at Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas. He as­sured sup­port­ers that he will pro­vide the funds in the bud­get to ad­dress crit­i­cal mat­ters af­fect­ing the coun­try, main­ly crime, which has cit­i­zens un­easy and un­com­fort­able. He said that al­though the $4 bil­lion food im­port bill was soar­ing, he in­tends to tack­le it.

Pro­vid­ing health­care fa­cil­i­ties with im­proved ser­vice and qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion were al­so be­ing giv­en pri­or­i­ty. Howai said that while the Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Tu­ition Pro­gramme (GATE) will not be scrapped, "The waste and abuse in GATE will not con­tin­ue." He said in the last few months the Gov­ern­ment brought down the un­em­ploy­ment rate from 5.9 per cent to 4.9 per cent. In­fla­tion fell to 7.1 per cent as the coun­try's fi­nan­cial re­serve was strong.