Govt boldly defends budget cuts to constitutional agencies

The A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Administration has boldly defended its move to cut billions of dollars from the budget, insisting that the funds proposed for the constitutional agencies are adequate for their respective functioning.
Director of the Department of Public Information (DPI), in a statement on Wednesday, claimed that the proposed sums for these agencies in the 2017 National Budget are greater than those granted in 2016 but failed to address the concern that the monies approved are less than what was requested by the entities.
Moreover, the Government did not consider the fact that the approved sums for 2016 were also exceedingly shorter than what was requested by the agencies for that year.
Opposition Chief Whip Gail Teixeira on Monday pointed out that the total budgetary allocation for the constitutional agencies in 2016 amounted to some billion, while the Finance Ministry’s proposed amount for 2017 is a mere billion, a major reduction of approximately billion.
Even more alarming, she noted, is that the constitutional agencies altogether requested some billion but Government is only willing to approve some billion, a difference of over billion.
For example, where Government boasts of having increased the funds to the Supreme Court from .712 billion in 2016 to .766 billion in 2017, the sums provided is actually .67 million short of what the agency requested.
In the Government’s clarification, it explained that the only reduced allocation was for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) since there are no expenses for elections in the year 2017.
“Both 2015 and 2016 were election years. 2017 is not an election year. Therefore, it cannot be expected that the GECOM allocation for a non-election year would be greater than its budget for election years,” the statement posited.
Former Junior Finance Minister Juan Edghill had lambasted the Government for providing a vague justification for the budget cuts in documents he received.
The Finance Minister, in documents dispatched to the Office of the Opposition, explained that the monies were reduced “in the context of existing fiscal space and the consideration of the agencies request within national development priorities.”
The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) posited that Government’s priorities are clearly not in order since they conveniently find money for partying, events like the grand jubilee celebration, inauguration ceremonies and to rent a house as a drug bond, but not to provide the requested sums to the constitutional agencies so they can optimally conduct their operations. The Party had also raised concerns about the funding for non-existent agencies, but Government did not address this issue in its statement.
Edghill pointed out that there are several agencies, such as the Public Service Appellate Tribunal, the Human Rights Commission, the Office of the Ombudsman and the Public Procurement Commission, which are not functioning, but yet the Finance Ministry allocated sums for its operations.
The former Finance Minister explained that these constitutional agencies are the ones to determine its priorities and how it intends to operate for the fiscal year, and therefore, will make submissions. He questioned if these bodies are inactive, then who made the recommendations for monies?
The Party contended that these budget cuts are yet another flagrant attempt by Government to interfere in the rights of these autonomous bodies and to evade scrutiny.