Nov 21, 2023, is Budget Day! Address to be delivered by Premier Wheatley
Premier Wheatley is expected to deliver the Budget Address during the Sixth Sitting of the First Session of the Fifth House of Assembly (HoA) slated to start at 10:00 AM on Tuesday, November 21, 2023.
There is also going to be a new venue for the Sitting, which will be held at Eileene L. Parsons Auditorium, H. Lavity Stoutt Community College campus at Paraquita Bay.
What are the spending priorities?
The budget figures and theme of his 2024 Budget are unknown at this time; however, the Minister of Finance is expected to make some major announcements on capital projects and other spending priorities of his seven-month-old administration.
The public has been clamouring for better roads, water services and general infrastructure development, better health care and education, and more funding for Tourism. The Premier‘s first budget was $399.33M dollars.
The move to the college on this occasion was after a decision taken by Honourable Members to accommodate more space for visitors. The current HoA Chambers lost some space in its gallery, following renovation to facilitate social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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9 Responses to “Nov 21, 2023, is Budget Day! Address to be delivered by Premier Wheatley”
$200 - Education
$200 - Water and Sewage
$150 - Electricity
$200 - Health care
$125 - Infrastructure
Basic needs:
$5,000,000 - travel
$4,000,000 - party and drinks
$10,000,000 - paying family who are contractors hired to provide those luxury services listed above.
End of budget.
It is of a truth that no single Country, person or person, nor political party/parties neither has nor have any right nor rights to ownership of the people of the BVI to treat as he, she, or they as please/pleases. This truth being true the people of the BVI deserve to hear no less than a genuine true Budget Speech from the mouth of our Top local political leader.
The whole world are embroil in confusion mostly due to uneven political leaders failing to keep their promise to the that has intrusted their financial wellbeing into their care.
A new Budget Speech will be spoken by our Premier. Many ears will hear. Hopefully, whether pleasing or unpleasing, truth will prevailed.
I which no one anything, which sound too close to witch, but rather I pray God our Creator blessings to us all, both now, and in the future.
A budget is a planned, estimated, fiscal road map as to how government plan to allocate resources. Therefore, government has to understand a) how much resources it will have (estimated), b)how it will spend its resources, c) why it will spend resources in the way it does, and d) have command of the budget process. The proposed budget should result in robust battles and debates in the House of Assembly (HoA), the Legislative Branch; my and it should.
Moreover, political scientist V. O. Key in his seminal 1940 essay “ The lack of a Budgetary Theory” notes there is no scientific way to allocate resources through a budget process. Further, former New York City mayor John Lindsay notes, “All budgets are political documents.” Further, every budget is a choice, a policy decision, a value judgment about what government proposed to do with its resources (A Practical Guide to Government Management-Vince Meconi). Since every budget is a political document, budgeting may demonstrate game characteristics, and to play the game well one must know the rules of the game. The bottom line is to deliver the best services to the most people organizations/agencies must maximize budget efficiency; success is delivering positive outcome within resources limits. Dr. Hon Premier Natalio Wheatley, D-7, MoF, Budget Day speech will be include a combination of both the Operations and Maintenance, and Capital budgets planned expenditures.
Government should explore and consider extracting capital projects from the budget and create a discrete a) O&M budget, and b) Capital budget. Typically, O&M expenditures are authorized and appropriated for 1 fiscal year; whereas, capital projects cross fiscal years and have long gestation periods. In developing a separate Capital budget, Public works/Engineering should develop and maintain a current rolling list of backlogged capital projects with estimated costs. For transparency and citizens engagement and buy in to budget expenditure process, projects can be bundled and put before the voters.
You mentioned Public Work developing and maintaining a current rolling plan listing of backlogged projects with estimated cost. Such a list would provide a concrete number of how much needs to be borrowed to fund the capital projects. But no disrespect intended, but does the Public Work Department has the required staff for this vital task. Public Works struggles to maintain an effective ‘pot hole’ programme. It deserves all the blows it gets. For example, just yesterday I saw a pic of a tourist standing in a pot joke taking a picture. That pic will be taken out the territory and shown around to demonstrate the Third World status of the BVI. We can do more better than this, unforced error. This bad grammar can be viewed as emblematic of what is bad with the BVI . It may not be fair but as the old idiom goes, a picture is worth a thousand. We must work more diligently to starve people of the opportunity to make us look bad.
On a lighter note, it seems as if you are encouraging and expecting qualitative, robust battles and debates in the HoA on the budget. Lol. There should be. Further you are creating the impression that the Legislative branch and Executive ( Cabinet)branch are separate and independent branches. Well, you know in the Westminster system there is little daylight between the Legislative branch and cabinet. As you always note it is a flawed process, for the government usually can pass anything it wants. But it is what is. It is a majoritarian rule system.