The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The opposition’s shadow finance minister has slammed the government’s decision to increase non-Dorian spending by $120m, branding it a “farce designed to mislead the Bahamian people”.

Chester Cooper, also the Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) deputy leader, said in a statement that the Minnis administration’s supplementary appropriations announcement in Parliament was used “to push through spending the government neglected to put in its substantive 2019-2020 fiscal budget”.

Questioning why an additional $120m in “totally unrelated” Dorian spending was being “heaped upon the taxpayer at this time”, Mr Cooper said he was “alarmed that this government is engaged in record borrowing” with a “good chunk of it having nothing to do with” the storm.

“We see that we are being asked to rubber stamp $76m in spending that has absolutely nothing to do with Hurricane Dorian,” he added, referring to the recurrent or fixed-cost borrowing element. “This proves the last budget exercise was a farce designed to mislead the Bahamian people on this administration’s lip-service effort at fiscal responsibility and transparency.

“Of the $590m being borrowed, we see that $27m has been spent on a generator for the Blue Hills plant. This is in addition to the $95m in borrowed money BPL spent on Station A, and the $70m in borrowed money BPL plans to spend on Station D at Clifton before selling these assets to a foreign company in a less-than-transparent process.”

Mr Cooper also criticised the government’s “botched” lump sum payment to civil servants in December, and said: “The government also spent $23m on a lump sum payment to some public service workers in a botched and widely-criticised exercise last month.”

“There has also been the sinking of another $16m of hard-earned taxpayer dollars into the failed Grand Lucayan hotel, a seemingly bottomless pit, which the government was warned not to buy. We now learn of another $37m in spending for upgrades to the Princess Margaret Hospital. It beggars belief that the government somehow learned of the need for these upgrades since the last budget was passed.”

Mr Cooper also questioned the government’s intent to spend an extra $7m on the Public Parks and Beaches Authority when his party was “not aware of any exigent need for upgrades on our beaches to this extent”.

He also called for a breakdown of the $8.6m in extra spending being funneled to the Prime Minister’s Office, and added: “If it is to be used for the ill-advised Disaster Recovery Authority and the new bureaucracy in the Ministry of Disaster Recovery, the taxpayer should receive full disclosure.”