PM Roosevelt Skerrit will be presenting the 2020/2021 national budget to Parliament tomorrow Tuesday, July 28, 2020; but Opposition Leader Lennox Linton has revealed certain inconsistencies in the proposed budget. The prime minister’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year amounts to $942,179,940; while the past budget for 2019/2020 was $1.2 billion – exceeding the current proposed budget by over $70 million.
According to the current budget which will serve till year ending June 30, 2021, the total recurrent expenditure will be $514,931,535 million and the total capital expenditure amounts to $427,248,405 million.
However, the breakdown for the current proposed budget is as follows:
- Ministry of Finance and Investment – $154,555,266 million
- Housing and Urban Development – $117,443,156 million
- Environment, Rural Modernization and Kalinago Upliftment – $61,812,002 million
- Ministry of Health, Wellness and New Health Investment – $59,875,856 million
- Ministry of Public Works and the Digital Economy – $52, 521,131 million
- Ministry of Education, Human Resource Planning, Vocational Training and National Excellence – $11,086,217 million
- Ministry of Blue and Green Economy, Agriculture and National Food Security – $37,166,122
Also, the budget contains executive request to parliament to have ECD$56,500,000 set aside for overdraft necessities, while ECD$5,000,000 is to be set aside to meet guarantee of overdrafts for statutory boards and public corporations. About EC$125 million is also requested to be obtained as a loan from the National Bank of Dominica to take care of COVID-19 responses.
However, UWP’s Lennox Linton in his reaction stated that the $32,000 dollars monthly rent approved by Cabinet for the prime minister’s residence was not captured expressly in the national budget but is expected to have been covered by the budget. This, according to him, is against the background that the 2018/2019 budget approved $544,400 for the prime minister’s official residence and an actual expenditure of $310,139 was reported to have been spent at the official residence in Morne Bruce even though the prime minister was known to have actually lived with the president at the State House on Victoria Street.
“The prior year 2018/2019, we’re told that the actual expenditure on the prime minister’s official residence was $310,139 even though he lived with Charlo the president at the State House on Victoria Street,” Linton said. “No works in terms of repair, rehabilitation or reconstruction took place at the location where he resided at Morne Bruce which belonged to the state, nothing has happened there since he moved out, and as a matter of fact you can consider the building to be derelict.”
This article is copyright © 2020 DOM767
