Opposition Leader Mark Golding (right) and Opposition spokesperson on finance Julian Robinson (Photo: Garfield Robinson)
Opposition announces $23b in future expenditure
OPPOSITION Leader Mark Golding and other members of his party have pushed back at Finance Minister Fayval Williams’ $48.83-billion estimate of its recently announced proposals, which it now estimates will cost $22.6 billion if they’re elected as the next government.
Golding and Julian Robinson, opposition spokesperson on finance, previously outlined the People’s National Party’s (PNP) policy objectives over the last two weeks, during the 2025/2026 Budget Debate. At the end of the debate on Tuesday the finance minister estimated that those proposals would cost $48.83 billion in additional expenditure, while projecting reduced government revenue from the removal of certain budgetary actions.
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However, in a press conference held on Wednesday at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, Golding rejected Williams’ assertions as he noted that the Opposition’s proposals wouldn’t be implemented should the PNP form the next Government by September. He reiterated that the 2025/2026 budget is set to be approved in the Senate as well on Friday, and that the current budget would already be programmed into the function of the country’s fiscal framework.
“The minister tried to make out that what we were proposing in our presentation’s was an implied budget. That is not what we are doing, and we never said that we were doing that. We were putting forward our policy commitments for the first term while we are in government. Clearly, the phasing of our proposals will take into account the fiscal rules, the priorities that we have, and the situations that unfold and affect the economy going forward,” stated Golding on the Opposition’s proposals, which he said would not cost $48.83 billion.
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According to Damion Crawford, shadow minister of education, the proposal to give one full scholarship for a tertiary degree would cost $3.9 billion, and not the $31.50 billion that the minister outlined in her estimates of the Opposition’s proposal. He said that this was based on the assumption that 6,480 students would benefit from the the programme across all year cohorts and that their tertiary education would cost $600,000 per year.
Crawford also went on to explain that the Opposition would increase the allocation amount from $280 to $400 per day for the one meal per student and that this would cost an extra $9.7 billion. This is on top of the $8.98-billion budget related to the current school feeding programme, which would bring the total expenditure to $18.7 billion. The $9.7 billion in extra expenditure is higher than the finance minister’s $9-billion estimate.
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“Now, nobody would expect an incoming Government of the PNP, having been voted in on a mandate to deliver the change that we are bringing to society, to just follow the priorities of the Government that would have been voted out to put into office. Clearly that $360 billion will be reconfigured, and we will go through it very carefully, line by line, to decide what programmes we will keep, scale down, discontinue or defer to create room for the $23 billion that we want to roll out of that $360 billion,” Golding added.
The Opposition noted that it would not renew the legislation that gives the Government the ability to access $11.4 billion from the National Housing Trust (NHT) which is sent to the Consolidated Fund annually. Instead, the Opposition mentioned the plan to create a $1-billion deposit fund to allow for persons to access up to $500,000 in grants for the securing of their first house.
This is in addition to the proposals to introduce a flat water rate for senior citizens, a matching grant to businesses training employees that would be funded by the HEART/NSTA Trust, a $2.5-billion agricultural development fund, a $1.9-billion RIDE programme in the form of a weekly transport subsidy for rural students, and the waiver to be made available for newly formed SMEs (small and medium-size enterprise).
Robinson noted that the Opposition’s proposals would be grounded in reality and not be a ‘Probox moment’ in what he called a fantasy. Robinson’s comment relates to Minister Williams’ mention of persons being able to save extra money from the recent adjustment to the income tax threshold tthat could be used to purchase a Toyota Probox. The next general election is constitutionally due by September 2025.
“We’re proposing to move that [employment tax credit] from 30 to 40 per cent. We anticipate that to be a revenue-positive measure, not a cost to the budget. It will boost tax compliance by companies — which has been the experience so far with the ETC and by formalising employment,. It will also bring more employee-related revenue to the Government,” Golding told the briefing.
