Budget doesn’t reflect plight of ordinary citizens – Opposition Leader

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Leader of the Opposition in Parliament Jamale Pringle (Photo by Samantha Simon)
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By Robert A. Emmanuel

[email protected]

Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Jamale Pringle, in his official response to last week’s budget presentation, stated that it does not reflect the struggles currently being faced by Antiguans and Barbudans.

Pringle, the Member of Parliament for All Saints East and St Luke, highlighted a plethora of talking points to include the poor quality of roads across the country, the difficulty of collecting and sharing information, and the rising cost of living and housing.

The 2023 budget entitled “Reset, Recover, Revitalise” was presented in the Lower House by Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Gaston Browne, last week.

“It was a self-praising speech … small and medium-sized businesses that survived the pandemic … are still struggling; unemployment and underemployment is still high, especially among our nation’s youth,” Pringle stated as he gave his perspective on the state of the country.

The Leader of the Opposition also referenced the rising cost of living as noted in the recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) report which showed a 6.9 percent increase in goods for the 12-month period ending January 2023.

Another issue he raised was the difficulty that opposition parliamentarians encounter when trying to access important national statistics.

“We cannot continue to do things the way we are doing it because one of the hardest things to get in this country is information … [not even] information regarding employment [or] unemployment [figures] that we should be able to access through Social Security … can you get information from,” he said.

“If we are going to be resetting, the first thing we must do is reset the statistics, make sure that information is readily available because it is the data that you collected that determine how you plan to go forward,” he said.

Pringle, who opened the budget debate yesterday, made his presentation in a little over three hours.

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