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<Making the necessary corrections....changing course....has not been easy and it has been made more difficult but more urgent by the impact of the global recession that has made tough decisions not just necessary but inescapable. Since the start of the recession we have lost US$2.7 billion in export earnings, J$16.5 billion in bauxite revenue and J$5.7 billion in GCT. This is not fantasy; it is our reality! It is the burden we carry when we sit at the bargaining table with public sector workers who demand wage increases; it is the burden we carry when we try to pacify citizens protesting against bad roads or lack of water; it is the burden we carry when we are called on to roll back taxes.
We are not the only country confronted with this reality. When Canada was faced with a similar reality, it cut government spending by 20% and laid off 40,000 public sector workers. Today Canada's economy is doing well despite the recession.
The United States is now facing this reality and much of the debate in Congress has been about that. They are grappling with a fiscal deficit of 10%; ours is 6%. It is this reality that almost resulted in a shutdown of the federal government last month before the President and the Congress agreed on cutting the budget by US$38 billion this year with further cuts to be negotiated over the next 4 years.
The United Kingdom was more aggressive. Their fiscal deficit is 11.4%. Prime Minister Cameron is cutting his budget by 19% over the next 4 years. Welfare benefits are being reduced and 500,000 public sector workers are to be laid off. That is how they have chosen to deal with their reality!
How have we dealt with ours? If we take out debt service payments, we have reduced our budget in real terms by 15% over the last two years. Some see this as a lack of compassion for the poor. The experts say we have not gone far enough, the cuts should have been deeper, our decisions should have been tougher.
How much tougher could we have been? Some countries chose to reduce wages to public sector workers; some restricted them to a 4-day week; some even cut pensions. We have not gone there! But insisting that the government must spend more on this and spend more on that in order to do more for the poor will drag us there! Insisting that we must pay wage increases that we simply cannot afford, however reasonable they may be, will drag us there! Clamouring for a rollback of taxes when the revenues cannot cover what we are already spending will drag us there. That is the reality!>
I now return you to your regularly scheduled yapping..
<Making the necessary corrections....changing course....has not been easy and it has been made more difficult but more urgent by the impact of the global recession that has made tough decisions not just necessary but inescapable. Since the start of the recession we have lost US$2.7 billion in export earnings, J$16.5 billion in bauxite revenue and J$5.7 billion in GCT. This is not fantasy; it is our reality! It is the burden we carry when we sit at the bargaining table with public sector workers who demand wage increases; it is the burden we carry when we try to pacify citizens protesting against bad roads or lack of water; it is the burden we carry when we are called on to roll back taxes.
We are not the only country confronted with this reality. When Canada was faced with a similar reality, it cut government spending by 20% and laid off 40,000 public sector workers. Today Canada's economy is doing well despite the recession.
The United States is now facing this reality and much of the debate in Congress has been about that. They are grappling with a fiscal deficit of 10%; ours is 6%. It is this reality that almost resulted in a shutdown of the federal government last month before the President and the Congress agreed on cutting the budget by US$38 billion this year with further cuts to be negotiated over the next 4 years.
The United Kingdom was more aggressive. Their fiscal deficit is 11.4%. Prime Minister Cameron is cutting his budget by 19% over the next 4 years. Welfare benefits are being reduced and 500,000 public sector workers are to be laid off. That is how they have chosen to deal with their reality!
How have we dealt with ours? If we take out debt service payments, we have reduced our budget in real terms by 15% over the last two years. Some see this as a lack of compassion for the poor. The experts say we have not gone far enough, the cuts should have been deeper, our decisions should have been tougher.
How much tougher could we have been? Some countries chose to reduce wages to public sector workers; some restricted them to a 4-day week; some even cut pensions. We have not gone there! But insisting that the government must spend more on this and spend more on that in order to do more for the poor will drag us there! Insisting that we must pay wage increases that we simply cannot afford, however reasonable they may be, will drag us there! Clamouring for a rollback of taxes when the revenues cannot cover what we are already spending will drag us there. That is the reality!>
I now return you to your regularly scheduled yapping..