Today, Nov 29, 2022 is Budget Day; Finance Minister Wheatley’s first Budget
Honourable Wheatley took over from former Minister of Finance and former legislator Andrew A. Fahie in the third year of a Virgin Islands Party (VIP) Government that was elected in February 2019.
The Budget Address is expected to set out the Unity Government’s spending and revenue priorities before the next general elections.
The next election must be held no later than May of 2023.
Dr Wheatley is expected to deliver his address at the Save the Seed Energy Centre in Duff's Bottom on the main island of Tortola, where the Ninth Sitting of the Fourth Session of the Fourth House of Assembly (HoA) will convene.
The Budget is a projection of what the Government would like to spend and an estimate of how much revenue it plans to collect, according to figures from the Financial Secretary.
Usually, other Departments, especially the revenue agencies, will make contributions to the final draft speech.
Public shut out of SFC
It is customary at this Sitting that the Budget Address, read by the Minister of Finance, is the only item on the Order of the Day.
A day or two following the address, the HoA goes into Standing Finance Committee (SFC) deliberation of the whole House to examine the Budget, which is the Appropriation (2023) Act 2022, Clause by Clause and Department by Department.
Public sector agencies and Central Government Ministries and Departments are called in to testify and justify their budget requests and most often argue for more funds. The session is private, according to the Standing Orders.
The Ministry of Finance, including the Financial Secretary and senior staff, are there throughout the SFC meetings to answer questions and be the main resource of the committee.
Once this process is completed, a report of the process is prepared, then there is a debate on the merits and principles of the Bill.
As of publication time, we had no information on the Budget theme or the amount.
The Budget Address is expected to be aired LIVE from 10:00 am on the House of Assembly VI Youtube; House of Assembly of the Virgin Islands Facebook; 780 AM ZBVI Radio; CBN-Radio (90.9 FM); FLOW TV Channel 101; and CCT TV Channel 291.
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11 Responses to “Today, Nov 29, 2022 is Budget Day; Finance Minister Wheatley’s first Budget”
1) Give us an At Large system that never worked anywhere but they implemented it in the BVI knowing it is a failure but make us accept it without a choice and have us fighting over it to this day hoping we fail.
2) A loan guarantee, not a loan nor a grant, in time of need after the worse hurricane in the world their help to us is a loan guarantee with conditions that were geared to enslave us to take us over while we were vulnerable. While giving other islands grant.
3) Send ships with body bags to help us after Irma thinking the worse for us as usual.
4) Allow the public service under the Governor to fail hoping that the country will fail and then today turn around and blame the elected government for their failure.
5) Help build prisons but never help build schools.
6) Make us feel as if they really care about us and have some of us believing this and now have us, once again, divided so they can have an easier time trying to take us over as we have been made to believe that we can do nothing good and whatever happens to us by them is our fault as we left them no choice.
7) Try to kill our financial services industry and our country by putting the EU and using another order in council as their front and demanding we make beneficial ownership public although the courts now rule in the same position the BVI has been taking but what they want they want, and they are above the law. However, they insist that we must not do what they do but follow the law or they will deal with us.
8) In the middle of the worse pandemic in over 100 years give us a COI while we and our economy were dying where they hired the Commissioner, paid him, called it transparent, used the same staff from their organization to assist the commissioner, used no transparent process in the entire set up and process including the selection of the Commissioner for the COI, get a report saying what they were saying before the COI started(who pays the piper calls the tune), issued an order in council to suspend the constitution if the measures from their apparent pre-authored one man COI is not implemented and call this democracy and good governance while the biggest failure was all the subjects under the governor and police but they get to tell and validate their own story and get to fix their major issues and lack of transparency themselves without consequences. Now, most likely left the country to plan the next move in a time when we are recognizing an important time in our history, but the elites see nothing wrong with this picture. Yes, I agree we have to make some adjustments, but we have done well in the BVI and need to stop letting these people make us think differently because they are worse than us if you examine them, but they can look into us, but we cannot look into them. SMDH
To me, the budget should be a step step process, ie, 1 Operations and Maintenance budget (O&M), 2) Capital. Infrastructure/capital(Roads, water, wastewater, stormwater, electricity, ports, telecommunications)investment is critical to national growth and government and to state on the leading edge of being a top competitive destination. Infrastructure investment will require new/expanded revenue sources and funding mechanisms, ie, bonds, etc.