The Opposition Spokesperson on Finance, Julian Robinson gave his response to the Minister of Finance, Fayval Williams' budget presentation in parliament earlier today.

The country will need additional revenue due to the damage wrought by Hurricane Melissa. This explains the need to impose additional taxes. Jamaica is now in a period where it will have to tighten its belt and make infrastructure rehabilitation a top priority.

While this may be the case, the Opposition Spokesperson on Finance said it does nothing to take away from the government’s mismanagement of expenditure.

Robinson said, “ The hurricane we are told is why taxes are necessary. Melissa came; she damaged the country, the government needs revenue to spend. That is the narrative being told. And on the surface, it is a sympathetic one.

“But if you look at what this government was doing in the two years before Melissa, you will get an additional perspective. In two consecutive years, the government securitised future revenues from the Norman Manley International Airport and the Sangster International Airport, raising over $70 billion in 2023/24 and over $60 billion in 2024/25. 

“What that means is that they sold off 10 and 12 years of future revenues of both airports to fund those budgets. (An analogy, Madam Speaker, is you going to your boss and asking for 12 months of your salary upfront.) These funds were used in part to meet recurrent expenditure, the routine, ongoing operational costs of running the government. 

“What that tells you, Madam Speaker, is that the government was financing its day-to-day expenses by selling off future earnings from our airports. Money that those institutions would have received in the years ahead was converted into cash up front to cover costs that a well-managed budget should have been able to meet through normal revenue. So this tells you that the revenue shortfall problem did not begin with the hurricane. That is a structural fiscal problem that predates Hurricane Melissa.

“Tax revenues were already inadequate before the hurricane arrived, because economic growth was already weak. The gap between what the government was collecting and what it needed to spend was already widening. The government was already searching for ways to bridge that gap. Melissa did not create those pressures. What she did was provide a more compelling explanation for measures this government was likely heading toward, regardless of whether a hurricane had struck or not.

“Madam Speaker, I want to be clear that none of this is said to minimise what the hurricane did to this country or to the people who are still living with its consequences. But the Jamaican people deserve an honest account of the context. And the honest account is that this government’s fiscal challenges did not begin with the hurricane. The hurricane just made them easier to explain away.”