Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller makes her contribution to the 2016/2017 Budget Debate at Gordon House, downtown Kingston, yesterday. (Photo: Michael Gordon)
OPPOSITION Leader Portia Simpson Miller has dismissed the Government’s 2016/17 budget as being made up of many programmes that were left behind by her Administration, but missing the critical elements that will make them workable.
She also said the Opposition was concerned that the Government had deviated from the plans for those programmes.
“We left them there with adequate funding… we are concerned,” Simpson Miller stated, arguing that the Andrew Holness-led Government was proving to be “a Government of announcements” which are not linked to formal policy and the funds to support those policies.
The Opposition leader made the criticisms in the House of Representatives yesterday during her budget presentation — a significant portion of which extolled the various programmes undertaken by her People’s National Party during its four years in power.
“Jamaica is now at a delicate stage of recovery and the budget being presented threatens to derail that recovery,” she stated during the presentation, which lasted just over an hour.
The former prime minister, whilst insisting that her Administration had been well on the way to leading the country to economic prosperity, accused the two-and-a-half-month-old Jamaica Labour Party Government of slipping in a $13.8-billion tax package on the sly.
Simpson Miller, like her spokesman on finance Dr Peter Phillips did a couple of days ago, said the Government has not delivered on the $1.5-million tax break as promised, and described the measures announced by Finance Minister Audley Shaw last week as having been “deceptively imposed”.
“They said there would have been no new taxes to fund their promised income tax relief. Now every Jamaican man woman and child is paying for that promise,” she said, adding that thousands of people would not benefit.
“What is worse, is that no one will get the $18,000 — not until 2018 — yet everyone will have to pay the new taxes,” remarked the Opposition leader, brushing aside the personal income tax relief plan as “tax-perity”.
She also criticised the proposed changes to the education system. “The auxiliary fee confusion has cast a shadow over the future of our education system,” she argued, and charged that the allocations to secondary schools are not enough to plug the gaps in their budget that would be created by removing those fees.
Simpson Miller also pointed to announcements of changes to the school-feeding programme the early childhood stimulation programme, and the addition of years to the secondary school system.
“The reality for the country is that an underfunded education system will set back the tremendous gains of the past four years. It is time for Jamaica to again have a national consultation on education and arrive at a consensus for the preservation of its gains and the correction of its problems,” she suggested.
Opposition Leader Andrew Holness will make his contribution to the debate on Tuesday.
