| Chief Minister and Minister of Finance, Hubert Hughes, told reporters on Wednesday that the letter from Minister for the Overseas Territories, Henry Bellingham, telling the Anguilla Government how to use the stamp duty money from the sale of the Viceroy note, came too late. He said his Government had already appropriated the money as it saw fit. |
Mr. Hughes said that sale took place over a year ago from which the Government received the final amount of money some two weeks ago. “As you have heard, this letter is telling us how we can spend this money and I want it to be known that this money talk was around for a long time,” he stated. “We had already decided how that money is to be applied. So the letter that came from England was too late for our consideration. “I think it was rather out of place that we are asked to pay our own way, and yet the Foreign Office is telling us how to spend our legitimate, straightforward, normal stamp duty at this time of crisis which I have inherited from the bad governance conducted by the Foreign Office and the Governors over a period of years.” Mr. Hughes continued: “Before I go any further, I would like to outline the financial position of the Government of Anguilla as of September 30, 2011. The Government of Anguilla received 14. 3 million US dollars (approximately 38.4 EC dollars for Stamp Duty related to the Viceroy transfer). This money has been placed in the Consolidated Fund which is the normal procedure for Stamp Duty. Some of the proceeds will be placed in reserves while some will be used to fund normal expenditure which includes capital. The local capital expenditure is actually funded from the recurrent… “The preliminary fiscal position as at 30th September 2011 shows that the Government of Anguilla presently is showing a surplus on the recurrent side that exceeds 26 million dollars EC. The summary of the fiscal position is 155. 2 million revenue; the expenditure is 128.8 million dollars and the surplus is 26.3 million dollars. Capital expenditure is approximately 3.7 million dollars. Most of the capital expenditure is being financed by the funds received in 2010 from the Catastrophic Risk Insurance Fund…to assist in the recovery process as a result of Hurricane Earl and to mitigate against further disaster.” Returning to Mr. Bellingham’s letter, Mr. Hughes said it stated: “The anticipated revenues from the sale of Viceroy Resort should not be used for recurrent expenditure but should be used for capital expenditure and to build up the Government of Anguilla’s reserves. The recent report by IMF anticipated an overall deficit of 20 million dollars in 2012 which is much worse than that projected in this current budget, and means that the Government of Anguilla would fail to meet its June 2010 commitment of balancing the overall budget by the end of 2012.” The Chief Minister said that by the end of 2011 the Government’s budget would be balanced. “I don’t think the Governor is too happy about that,” he added. Mr. Hughes said his intelligence had led him to believe that Mr. Bellingham did not write the letter; that it was written by a British civil servant and simply signed by the busy Minister. He was of the view that there was a misunderstanding of the finances of the Anguilla Government as a result of wrong reporting to the Foreign Office. |
