Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Feeling good about the budget presentation

Published: Wednesday October 8, 2008



Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira said she did not want to use the word "relieved" to describe how she felt about her historic piloting and passage of the 2008/2009 Budget in the House of Representatives last week even as she said it took a lot of hard work.

Instead, Nunez-Tesheira said she was glad that her Government colleagues in the Lower House, many of whom comprise the Cabinet are happy with her three hour and ten minute Budget presentation. She expressed no bad feelings about the experience despite the amount of criticisms she endured from members of the Opposition, analysts and others in the society.

"I guess I feel good about it. I mean we worked hard and I just think, you know it's just, what can I say, it's such a difficult (thing) for me to answer. I don't want to say relieved because it's not really a relief," Nunez-Tesheira said.

She did so in an interview with the Business Express just minutes after the 2008/2009 Budget was passed in the Lower House last Thursday close to 7 pm when asked to describe her first Budget experience.

"I think I worked hard and I worked hard on my presentation to make sure that, within the time constraint I had that I said what I needed to say and I feel that my colleagues are happy with what I've done and at the end of the day, that's what really matters," Nunez-Tesheira said.

Siparia MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who delivered the Opposition's lead response to the Budget, called the Budget a "Great PNM Hoax: a Blind Man's Bluff".

Describing the Budget as "anti-woman and anti-middle class", Persad-Bissessar, an experienced MP told the rookie Finance Minister, "Yuh ain't ready yet."

Persad-Bissessar slammed Nunez-Tesheira's announcement of the increase in premium gasoline from $3 to $4 per litre and the Government's record on project completion which the Finance Minister described in her Budget presentation as a role out plan for the Government's initiative to have this nation achieve developed country by 2020.

When Nunez-Tesheira wound up the Budget debate in the Lower House, she made her feelings clear about Persad-Bissessar's Budget response saying the Siparia MP is "predisposed" to using "crafted language, replete with innuendoes and half truths."

"You know when I came into this honourable (House) I've had experiences and time does not permit me to go into detail but I'll give you two examples. I think it was about only a few weeks ago, bringing the Auditor General's report and waving it around and saying - a deficit, a deficit, a deficit, a Budget deficit," Nunez-Tesheira said of Persad-Bissessar.

She even called the Siparia MP, "she" as sought to make her point but soon realised her error using such an unparliamentary reference.

"Sorry for using she. I always correct myself, the member knows well enough, well enough, that the Auditor General's report only deals with the Consolidated Fund. It does not deal with the IDF, Unemployment Fund, etc. In fact, you add that all up, you have a surplus," Nunez-Tesheira said.

She also took Persad-Bissessar to task on other issues such as the Government's project delivery and highlighted what she said was the Siparia MP's misrepresentation of a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) which said that of 121 projects, 95 projects have either been completed or are in the process of being completed.

\"I do not know if they expect every fiscal year, you are supposed to finish build a road, you supposed to finish build a hospital. I do not know. I do not know but as far as I am aware, as far as I am aware, the fiscal year you have to report but it is a continuum of a strategic plan which we have given a date of 2020," Nunez-Tesheria said.


Source:
Juhel Browne
Trinidad Express Newspapers
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_business_mag?id=161384858
jbrowne@trinidadexpress.com

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