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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
 The DNA has noticed a trend with this administration. The trend is that their previous year budget projections and promises do not line up with what they present at the end of year, and projects they speak about never materialize or initiated.
One stark case in point is with regard to the $100 million bond issuance for the Mortgage Corporation to build homes in the 2015 budget communication. Now, we are delighted to some degree by the failure of this by this administration, as there are a lot of homes in the country’s inventory currently that can be re-packaged to persons looking for a place to put their families. However, this this failure by this also shows, quite frankly, a lack of true understanding and deep analytical thinking on this administration’s part with regard to what they promised Bahamians and how and why they were to achieve this.
Simply put: The Mortgage Bond issuance never materialized - or so we have been led to understand- and no new homes were built.
The second thing we have to wrap our minds around is with regard to the vague promise of “seed capital” for the funding of $200 million in Public Private Partnership (PPP) funding from the government. There has been nothing that the DNA can recall that costs even half of that $200 million figure, neither do we hear of any Memoranda Of Understanding that would lead us to think that any true PPP was established and working for the benefit of Bahamians.
Under this PPP (Public Private Partnership) initiative as it was touted in the 2015 budget communication, roadways, airports, school facilities and healthcare infrastructure were supposed to be at least initiated but these proposals never materialized. We in the DNA also want to know what happened to the seed money, and we wish to have a proper accounting and evaluation of how any of it was spent if it was spent at all.
The DNA also noted that the widely touted National Development Plan (NDP) still, to this date, has not yet been delivered. The current administration came to the public in early April 2016 with a State of the Nation Address and basically told the Bahamian people what we already knew on several fronts. What we expected for the $400 thousand plus dollars spent with the NDP Council, with funding provided by the Inter-American Development Bank, was an actual plan for where this country should be heading in the next 25 years.
What the DNA does know was that works have been carried out under this heading for the NDP and there should be more to report to Bahamians. Our sources have told us that the State of the National report delivered in April is nearly 2 years old, and the government simply held on to the raw data and information and essentially impeded the work needed to be done for Bahamians.
Several other initiatives, development projects and foreign direct investment projects were promised to be developed from last year’s budget communications that simply have not materialized!
On the public finance front: Recurrent Expenditure was pegged at $2.136 billion but for this year, 2016, it is pegged at $2.321 billion. Nearly a $200 million increase year-on-year. The government has already stated that it will borrow some $90 million to cover the shortfall it forecasted in this budget, but we believe that they will have to borrow more money to cover the shortfall due to the failure of this administration to reign in the wasteful spending.
What we in the DNA also noted on the Recurrent Revenue side is that while the Minister for Finance did admit to revenue being short by nearly $40 million dollars, he did not state what was the original projections made for this year’s revenue forecast. From the 2015 budget communication, estimates stated that recurrent revenue was $2.047, which we were then advised were revised downwards by $47 million over the previous 2014 year.
In this year’s 2016 budget communication the Minister of Finance noted a shortfall of close to $40 million. When we add this with the downward revision of last year’s estimates by some $47 million, which already had a shortfall of over $60 million; it seems as if we are losing more money every year as we move further with this administration on top of the Value Added Tax being added onto the backs of Bahamians.
We in the DNA feel that this administration just cannot control itself; it’s spending or its project management to reduce the overall cost to the Bahamian people.
The DNA has gone on record with committing to financial transparency provisions, which have proven in other jurisdictions to reign on profligate spending by governments. Also, we have committed to enhancing the revenue generating agencies in earnest and not just talk. We will do what is necessary, at all cost to bring clarity to the VAT regime and the Central Revenue Agency. The Bahamas is simply too big, too old, too important and its people too valuable to allow this to continue on in this fashion.
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