10 December 2015
Hon. Victor F. Banks
Chief Minister and Minister of Finance
Ministry of Finance, Government of Anguilla
The Secretariat
The Valley
Anguilla
Dear Mr. Banks,
We write to you to express our total disappointment with the 2016 Government Budget you presented to the people of Anguilla in our House of Assembly yesterday. You mentioned fiscal prudence, but there seems to be no fiscal prudence whatsoever in your budget. Instead of a reduction in the budget to reflect Anguilla’s continuing deep recessionary economic environment, which would have been fiscally prudent given Anguilla’s high unemployment, suffocating and shrinking private sector, and …… , you are presenting a substantially increased budget (some 20%) in the face of steadily reducing ability of the people of Anguilla to sustain such increased budget.
Further, despite your reference to the need to grow the economy and “a robust growth strategy”, “a return to robust and steady growth”, “make tough decisions”, we see nothing in your budget that even remotely addresses or seeks to stimulate any economic growth whatsoever or makes any tough decisions. In fact, what has been presented to the people of Anguilla is quite the opposite: no growth; further decimation of the economy through increased extraction of already non-existent cash from the pockets of the people and businesses of Anguilla which can only have the impact of further constraining economic growth; and a carefree and callous failure to reduce unnecessary government expenditure and associated taxation despite the financial hardship being faced by the people and businesses of Anguilla over a prolonged period now into its eighth year.
There is no question that high electricity prices have been playing a major role in strangling Anguilla’s economy, and just when it appeared that declining oil prices would provide some relief to our people you have chosen to increase the tax on electricity consumption. How much more uncaring will you be of your people’s plight?
While on the one hand you claim that property values have fallen considerably, your budget practically doubles property tax receipts – how can much reduced property values result in much increased property tax?
Your people are in danger of losing their homes and lands en masse through inability to meet their debts in this deeply recessionary economy, yet instead of producing a budget that creatively assists your people to recover themselves financially, you increase their tax burden by a further XX%, taking tens of millions of additional dollars from them that they need to save themselves from the loss of their homes and lands. Mr. Chief Minister, why are you doing this?
Chief Minister, it appears that you are deaf to the calls of your people and seemingly inured against empathizing with the longsuffering of your people. But we ask you one more time: please reconsider this Budget and reduce it. In our view there is substantial scope to meaningfully reduce government expenditure and associated taxation while at the same time allocating funds to new objectives, without significantly impairing the provision of government services. We have no desire to make difficulty for your government. We simply seek an approach to government that operates much more efficiently and effectively and lightens the burden on your people during this time of serious financial hardship being suffered virtually by all, people and businesses alike.
We pray your ….
Respectfully yours,
Rev. Dr. H. Clifton Niles
Representative
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
