Africa-Press – Mauritius. No one can undermine the credibility of the Police Force as much as police officers themselves can No enquiry will undermine trust in the police but can in fact by holding errant police officers accountable give new impetus to discipline within the force’
Milan Meetarbhan, lawyer, political analyst and with wide experience as operator and regulator in the financial sector, shares in this week’s interview his views on the latestBudgetwhich he thinks was more an accounting exercise than what is really expected from a Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
He comments onhorseracing as a leisure industry and the regulatory and the politico-financial aspects of these rapidly developing. He also elaborates on the importance of the Rule of Law in keeping with both local and international norms, with the example of the expulsion ofa Slovak national to illustrate his points. Mauritius Times:A Budget ‘for the people’ – that’s how Finance Minister Padayachy qualified his third 2022-2023 Budget.
Whether this is a populist budget or not is perhaps besides the point, since the minister could not have done otherwise given the expectations of the population in favour of a “budget social” in the dire circumstances for the vast majority of consumers, who are battered by rising prices and an eroding purchasing power, isn’t it?
This budget is promoted as a Budget “for the people”. But all previous budgets were supposed to befor the people! On Tuesday however we heard a speech that was essentially from the Minister for the Budget and not a speech from the Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development.
If the annual speech is one from the Budget minister telling us about an additional classroom that will be built in a school and a road that will be tarred in a village and how some benefits will be adjusted for inflation, then the question is when will the Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development deliver his State of the Nation address on the current state of our economy, what are the challenges that lie ahead and how government intends to address these.
I have heard the term “budget social” used by government spokesmen every year. If the object of the annual exercise is a social and political one and a government wants to be rated according to how it scores on the “social budget” index, then so be it.
Let it remain an essentially accounting exercise from the Budget minister. But what about the state of public finances, the major trends of the economy, the new or adjusted national economic policies, when do we get to hear about these?
*Navin Ramgoolam’s comments on the budget about it being ‘misleading, smacks of manipulation of numbers… without any global vision or economic strategy… confetti measures’ encapsulate the Opposition’s views thereon.
These may be justifiable criticisms, but they seem to miss the bigger (political) picture, isn’t it? As I said just now, over the years the Budget Speech has lost a lot of its former status as an economic policy statement and become increasingly an accounting and PR exercise.
Dr Ramgoolam’s reaction to the speech was, in my view, a reflection of the disappointment of many people who were hoping that at a time when we are being regularly told about major economic challenges the Government would state what these challenges are and how it plans to address them.
The Minister had deliberately chosen to ignore the bigger economic picture and his primary concern seems to have been the political goals he had set himself.
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