Budget Late, Finance Minister explains why

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#TurksandCaicos, April 13, 2023 – The Turks and Caicos is two weeks into the new financial year and the Budget has yet not been debated. Residents remain unaware of how much money was made last year, how much cash will be spent this year and what that money will be spent on and word is it will take a few more weeks for that information to be made public .  Finance Minister E Jay Saunders addressed the issue on Tues April 11th.

“Long story short we are going to present the budget in the middle of May,” he said

Saunders was a guest on Financially Speaking on RTC with host Drexwell Seymour who queried what was causing the hold-up. The budget is usually tabled in the House of Assembly by March so it is ready to go on April 1st. But that has not happened for at least four years now.

Saunders maintained that it was ready to be presented in the House of Assembly and said why it hadn’t been publicized so far.

“As soon as it’s done, you can’t just present it because you have to lay it and give the Appropriations Committee time to go through it. [There are] certain processes, as soon as it’s done you can’t just go in the House and pass it. When you calculate all of those things the minimum delivery time would be in May which will give us a bit of breathing space,” he said.

“We could have pushed and cut something short and probably have it in April but there are a number of things going on” he said, citing a number of trips that the Premier would have to take in April and May but did not directly say why it had missed the April 1st timeline in the first place.

Once again, the persistent issue of the PNP administration’s tight fisted communications strategy could be faulted.  Had it not been for the direct line of questioning, residents would have remained in the dark regarding the state of country finances, as the end of the budget year approached and then passed.

Despite electing not to give details, Deputy Premier Saunders described the budget as historic, maintaining that the Turks and Caicos continues to experience robust interest from investors, visitors, second home owners and its leading sector, Tourism, is booming.

“I think we are doing a lot of things on a much grander scale than before.”