Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 07, 2015 (SKNIS)—The first Budget (2016) of the Government of National Unity will have as its hallmark fiscal discipline and fiscal responsibility, according to Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Dr. the Honourable Timothy Harris.
“I would say the Budget starts with this philosophy—and what brought Team Unity together in large measure is a philosophy of good governance that things that were going awry now had to be done differently and so we said that we needed a fresh start with the governance agenda,” said Prime Minister Harris at the start of the Budget Estimates Meetings on November 4.
“We have gone through a process of consultation, national consultation on the Budget that in itself is not new, but what was new about it was that we had more inputs than ever before in the period of consultation with respect to the Budget and that we gave a lot more socio-economic partners an opportunity to participate in budget making. The Youth had a voice, The St. Kitts Christian Council had a voice, The St. Kitts Teachers Union had a voice, The St. Kitts Nurses Association had a voice, The St. Kitts-Nevis Trade and Labour Union had a voice, The St. Kitts Bar Association had a voice, and The St. Kitts-Nevis Youth Parliament had a voice,” the prime minister said.
“The Budget will demonstrate in a real sense that we are listening, that having listened and having weighed the options available to us that we are now responding to the felt needs of St. Kitts and Nevis,” Dr. Harris said.
“The Budget is clothed in accountability and in an accountability framework. That is why from day one we postulated that this Budget will not be a deficit one, that as part of the fiscal prudence and fiscal responsibility it is important for us as a Government to live within our means,” he said noting that it was “the squandermania of the past, the open sesame, with which they ran the Government that led as it were to record deficits throughout the life of the administration from 1995 until in 2008-2009 when I assumed the office of the Minister of Finance when for the first time in the history of the country we were able to make a surplus.”
“…so we are starting right because this good start would make for a very good ending with respect to the feature of accountability and by going through this process we are inculcating in the minds of those who are charged as finance officers and leadership of the ministries that they must play their role, that they must press to ensure that the budgetary objectives are in fact met—and we say to all of them be careful with respect to expenditure,” he said.
“We already advised of certain initiatives that will be put in place to ensure that expenditure is not undertaken willy-nilly and that one person who ought to benefit from certain allowances, for example, that these are being distributed in accordance with the Civil Service regulations so that the wild, fancy-free, loose way in which things were done in the past, we have closed that particular gate for a new order and a fresh start in public fiscal management,” Dr. Harris reiterated.
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