Full Statement: 2011/12 Budget
The full 36-page statement detailing the 2011/12 Budget which was delivered this morning [Feb 18] by Premier and Minister of Finance Paula Cox in the House of Assembly is below. The Premier started off by saying: “There are times when Government leaders take pleasure in seeing their predictions come true. This is not one of them. A year ago, I looked at what was happening all around us and I forecast in my Budget Statement that the road to recovery for Bermuda would be long and challenging.”
Click ‘Full Screen’ on upper right hand corner for greater clarity:
The PLP are so hung up (insecure) on comparing themselves to the UBP they actually dedicated 2.5 pages in the budget statement to a comparison of expenditures from 1997/98 to 2010/11 titled “What The Government Has Done For you Lately”. The premise being the UBP spent $94m in their last full year on the job compared to the PLP’s $304m last year.
They conveniently forgot to add the comparative debt or revenue increase comparisons, nor address the effects of inflation over 13 years.
Is there a public forum for questions on the budget?
I see that the government plans to cut travel 15% (down to 5.4 Million$), but immediately above there is a 186% increase in Transportation (from 1.6 Million to 6.6 Million$) which leads to a net increase of 3.4 Million$ in expenses that seem to both be related to government’s travel. Can someone please explain the difference between the two.
Reading through the actual report, it gives a comparison on this budget and that of 1997/98. These numbers seem staggeringly different. I wonder what the 1997/98 amounts would be today allowing for inflation.