After several days of debate by Government and Opposition elected representatives, the 2013 Anguilla Budget was passed in the House of Assembly on Monday afternoon, December 17. That was when Chief Minister and Minister of Finance, Hubert Hughes, summed up the debate and the Appropriation Bill, embodying the estimates of recurrent expenditure, capital expenditure and recurrent revenue, was given its third reading, having also gone through the committee stage.
With the passage of the budget, it should now receive the assent of the Governor. Prior to leaving Anguilla on official business and leave in London, however, Governor Alistair Harrison informed the Speaker by letter dated November 28, that he had not received instructions from London whether to assent to the budget. That was the same day that the Chief Minister delivered the budget address. The Governor anticipated that the budget would be discussed by the Chief Minister and the Minister for the Overseas Territories, Mark Simmonds, in London the following week. Nothing more has been heard about those talks. The Governor is expected to return to Anguilla on or about December 30.
Meanwhile, it is understood that a condition for the approval of the budget is the signing by the Anguilla Government of the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility (FFR), a policy partnership document introduced by the UK Government for the Overseas Territories. Anguilla is the last of the territories still to sign the document which was submitted by the UK more than a year and a half ago.
Chief Minister Hughes is adamant that his signing of the FFR is dependent on certain amendments to the policy. “I want it to be known that I’ve written Mark Simmonds since I came back to Anguilla on the FFR and I have outlined the conditions by which we can probably reach some sort of agreement on the FFR,” Mr. Hughes said in the House of Assembly on Monday.
“If these conditions are not met, my signature will not go to that document,” he stressed. “It’s no point I signing something for cheap expediency, for short-term gain, and in the final analysis the people of Anguilla suffer. [This is] because this island will not be permitted to spend more than 15 million dollars on any project without the consent of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And having gone through the history of projects been blocked, meaningful projects been blocked from London, for no reason, while people here suffer, there is no way a responsible leader should want to accede to such a request, to sign such a detrimental arrangement. We are still in the process of negotiating.”
The Chief Minster continued: “I am very confident that I’m being properly advised. A leader should know when to take advice and when not to take advice…As far as I am concerned, I have a little knowledge of my own and I cherish it. Dr. Aidan Harrigan is a decent individual and lives according to his conviction and training.
“If we look at the FFR, we realise how much more [we are] restricted in development and Anguilla is a developing state and needs development. And how we can go sign a FFR which restricts development in this day and age? Anguilla needs large inflows of money in our infrastructure to create the social economic conditions by which we can live on this island.And the FFR is far too restrictive in the amount Anguilla can put in a project without the approval from England. Anguilla’s economy cannot improve without an air and sea port. Madam Speaker, I look around the world [and have] never seen an island improve without the proper infrastructure.”
Anguilla’s 2013 budget comprises the following financing: Recurrent Expenditure – EC$188.12 million, an increase of 4.61 million over the 2012 budget; Recurrent Revenue – EC$ 193.1 million, an increase of 3.9 million over the 2012 figure; and Capital Expenditure – EC$ 32.6 million from several sources of funding comprising the EDF, grants from other development agencies, the private sector, foundations, the UK Government and the Anguilla Government’s reserves.
