From left: Peter Bunting, People's National Party general secretary, Robert Pickersgill, chairman, Senator Basil Waite and Dr Omar Davies, opposition spokesman on finance, speak to members of the media during a press conference at the party headquarters yesterday.- Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

The Opposition remains unimpressed by the Government's Budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year despite the major changes made in the first Supplementary Estimates.

Dr Omar Davies, opposition spokesman on finance, had declared that the Budget presented by the Government in April was not credible and yesterday, he gave a similar criticism of the Supplementary Estimates approved by the House of Representatives Wednesday morning.

"We have no greater confidence in the Supplementary Budget than the original one, and we had no confidence in the original Budget," Davies said during a press conference at the People's National Party's Old Hope Road headquarters.

Davies charged that the projections on which the Supplementary Estimates were computed were as unrealistic as the framework on which the original Budget was crafted.

Davies pointed to the projected fiscal deficit, which has jumped by $30 billion to $95.4 billion, as proof that the Government's initial projections were unrealistic.

He argued that even the new deficit target might be missed.

Davies continued to be critical of the Government for putting expenditure on social services under the knife.

cess needed

He castigated the Government for its failure to impose a cess on interest earned on government instruments. According to Davies, that move could add between eight and 10 billion dollars to the Government's coffers.

At the same time, the former finance minister repeated his demand for a clearer picture to be presented to the country on the details of talks involving the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"We are still concerned about the state of the IMF talks," Davies said.

"We are demanding that the Government tell the country about the components of the talks ... . The time for secrecy has long passed."

The former finance minister also called on the Bruce Golding administration to reconsider its decision to axe thousands of public sector workers in order to extricate itself from the financial bind in which it is mired.

Davies argued that it would not be easy to slash the public sector wage bill as the majority of that money is used to pay workers in the critical areas of health, education and national security.

"The notion that you can slash 20 per cent from the public sector is quite superficial," Davies said.

"What we, therefore, need to do is to work with the public sector employees in a joint effort to reduce the compensation as a percentage of the Budget. That must be the object, rather than speaking about slashing public sector in any sort of harum scarum way."

gary.spaulding@gleanerjm.com