**** Minister Abel says Study budget before criticising **** National Planning Minister Charles Abel has called on the leaders and people to study the overall budget framework before making unnecessary comments. Mr Abel was responding to Opposition Leader Belden Namah’s reply to the 2014 Budget about the deficit levels. When we talk about the budget we must understand how budgets are laid out and the format of the budget, we must read it carefully and understand the substance, otherwise we will talk about things that are not necessarily true, we make up things because we do not fully understand what is in the budget in the overall context. The deficit is not something that is new, it is part of a five-year outlook, a clear strategy our government set at the Alotau Accord. When we came in we were confident in the future of this country, we were determine once and for all to create a budget envelop to invest in the critical underlying enablers to get our country growing and move forward. The 7.9 percent budget deficit in 2013 and 5.9 percent in 2014 was clearly part of government five-year outlook, there is no secret or hidden agenda and not something plucked out from the sky, it is clearly spelt out in the five- year outlook. We are being disciplined by sticking to that outlook. We are always under pressure. We had K16 billion worth of capital projects through National Planning. Our Treasurer has maintained fiscal discipline. Minister Abel said the Government had not been irresponsible by going outside of the budget envelope.Of course, there are issues on how we raise the money and how do we fund the deficit but as we have stated all along it is contained in the budget. He said the funding would be raised domestically for good reasons as funding was available through domestic sources and there was risk involved in going outside and borrowing and one was the foreign currency effects that could undermine the budget. We have quite clearly stated what we are going to do that we will fund the budget deficit full using the domestic market and in 2014 if the pressures come to bear in the domestic economy we may have to look outside and that’s why Treasury has been prudent and planning for sovereign debt bond if we have to recourse to that.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 01:11:53 +0000
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