Golding targets shake-up of programmes tagged ‘discretionary expenditure’

A Mark Golding-led People’s National Party (PNP) administration would immediately conduct a “line-by-line” examination of the programme to be funded by approximately $360 billion set aside in the 2025-2026 Budget for what has been described as “discretionary expenditure”.

At the same time, Golding, who is facing his first national elections as president of the PNP, asserted yesterday that the suite of programmes put forward by the Opposition will cost approximately $23 billion and signalled that he anticipated “being able to deliver all of them initially”.

Discretionary expenditure is decided on by the incumbent political directorate based on their priorities, Golding, who is also opposition leader, explained.

“That $360 billion will be reconfigured, and we will go through it very carefully, line-by-line, to decide what programmes we will keep, what programmes we will scale down, what programmes we might discontinue altogether, and what programmes we might defer,” he told journalists yesterday during a post-Budget press conference at his St Andrew offices.

The opposition leader, however, declined to divulge any of the programmes that would come under scrutiny if his PNP wins the next general election, which is constitutionally due by September.

“There are some things that we may accelerate, there are some things that we may discontinue, and I don’t want to attempt to foreshadow that yet,” he said.

PUBLIC CRITICISM

Golding’s comments come as the parliamentary Opposition faces public criticism for failing to indicate the costs of the programmes he and other spokespersons have put forward and how they would be financed.

Finance Minister Fayval Williams suggested on Tuesday that the PNP’s proposals – or implied budget as she described it - would cost approximately $48.8 billion and warned that it would result in “FINSAC 2.0”.

FINSAC is a reference to the Financial Sector Adjustment Company, the entity that was established by the then PNP administration to manage the fallout from the collapse of Jamaica’s financial sector in the 1990s that was blamed largely on the high interest rate policy of the Government at the time.

It has been widely regarded as one of the worst financial crises in modern Jamaican history.

However, in pushing back at critics, Golding and other PNP spokespersons explained that reconfiguring the “discretionary expenditure” budget would provide the space for the $23 billion in programmes the party would roll out if it was handed the reins of government following the elections.

One of the proposals put on the table by the PNP is the provision of one meal per day for needy students at the primary and secondary level.

Senator Damion Crawford, PNP spokesman on education, said a Mark Golding-led administration would increase the cost per meal from $280 to $400 per student, placing an $18.7 billion price tag on a programme that would benefit some 246,400 students for the 190 school days in the academic year.

However, he noted that with $8.98 billion already allocated for school feeding in the budget for the next fiscal year, the PNP’s proposal would have a net cost of $9.7 billion.

$9 BILLION COST

“So, therefore, the additional [funds] that we would need to find to adequately feed 56 per cent of children that research has shown is likely to have difficulty eating a proper meal is going to be $9 billion,” Crawford said.

The PNP also proposed that new micro, small, and medium size enterprises would be exempted from corporate income tax for an initial three-year period.

Julian Robinson, the PNP spokesman on finance, said based on the PNP’s calculations, this would result in a $1-billion hit on the public purse.

The finance minister suggested that this proposal would cost the public purse $11 billion in the first year alone.

Robinson, citing data from the Companies Office of Jamaica, indicated that on average, 5,000 new companies were registered in Jamaica annually for the last three years.

“Let’s say 60 per cent of them make a profit. Based on that, we have also done a calculation of what that profit would look like, and so the impact on the treasury for offering that tax waiver for one year is $1 billion, no where near $11 billion,” he said.

Golding insisted that the PNP’s calculations were sound, noting that the party had gone through them “with care and attention and diligence.”

“We have reviewed available data from sources that are publicly known, the budget books, the fiscal policy paper, and other instruments that have been tabled with the budget … to analyse the costing of our proposals and how we would be able to pay for them.”

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com