Economists see no windfall on October 12 as wage, debt obligations mount

In the wake of the an­nounce­ment of Bud­get Day, lo­cal econ­o­mists wide­ly agree that all in­di­ca­tors sug­gest that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is un­like­ly to de­liv­er a pre­sen­ta­tion with a pro­ject­ed wind­fall on Oc­to­ber 12.

“They don’t have a lot of room in the Bud­get. I know it was said, ‘Promis­es made, promis­es kept, promis­es made, promis­es kept.’ But I think if you ask some peo­ple now about promis­es, they’d say promis­es not kept. And that’s a fun­da­men­tal is­sue be­cause the num­bers look good on pa­per. The re­al­i­ty is a lot dif­fer­ent,” said econ­o­mist, CEO of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness and for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne.

He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the coun­try’s out­look at the Hy­att Re­gency on Thurs­day while at­tend­ing a Pro­man event.