Opposition response to budget

Any financial analyst would find the response of the presentations by the opposition Minister of finance and leader of the opposition to be entirely inadequate.  In critiquing a budget one must clearly identify what the weaknesses are and present credible alternatives that would have given better results.  Instead what was presented was generalizations such as borrow more to do more.

It seems that the opposition has not learned the lessons from their past time in office.  One cannot solve the economic problems of a country (or an individual) by simply borrowing more.  At some point the funds borrowed have to be repaid.  In the late 1990’s and early 21^st century too much borrowing went into financing the budget and not enough into stimulating growth in the economy. 

When you listen to the Opposition, two main themes continually arise.  The first is the belief that when they left office that the economy was in good shape, health services were good and the education system had no problems. There seems to be no recognition of the fact that the country was in fact bankrupt.  Debt servicing costs were consuming a larger and larger portion of the budget and little was left over to provide the necessary government services.  With the level of debt that existed in the country, who would have lent more money to the government and what would be the cost? Borrowing can only make sense in the long term if those funds are put into productive enterprises.

The second issue surprises me as the opposition seems to suggest that what has transpired over the last two years has nothing to do with the worldwide global recession.  As I recall it was the Opposition who chided the government in 2008 for taking the position that the recession was not going to affect the country negatively.  Now they are saying that it is entirely the fault of the Golding administration and that no blame is to be attributed to the global meltdown.  If there are policy decisions that the PNP would have made that would have helped the economy then they need to elaborate on those and not simply state that the current ones have not worked.

The government has laid out its agenda for growth which is based on stabilizing the economy and reducing interest rates.  What we need to hear is a viable alternative being put forward by the Opposition that will result in growing the economy.  These plans can then be analysed to see if they will work. 

It is clear that the policies adopted by the PNP have not worked for the benefit of the country.  If they wish to form the next government then we need to hear some new ideas coming forth.  There is one definition of a fool as someone who does the same thing over and over but expects a different result each time.