OPPOSITION leader Sir Mekere Morauta has congratulated Treasurer and Finance Minister Patrick Pruaitch for handing down the 2008 Budget, which brought no surprises.
“I congratulate Mr Pruaitch for bringing down a balanced budget,” Sir Mekere said during the budget debate in Parliament yesterday.
“But we have to ask the question, is that a difficult feat, given the current and expected level of revenue from mining and petroleum?”
He said factors behind the favourable macroeconomic boom had nothing to do with action of Government but a result of emerging super powers of India and China.
“The minister is the envy of all previous ministers for Treasury and Finance in our entire 32 years of independence.”
Sir Mekere said Mr Pruaitch did not have to beg or borrow, raise any new taxes or to reduce expenditure to finance the budget.
“In fact, he does not have to do anything, apart from distribute the money that will roll in the Government coffers. Hardly a difficult task,” Sir Mekere said.
He said there was nothing much about the budget that was neither uncontroversial nor unsupportable, but represents a lost opportunity.
“It sets out no real programme of reform.
“We must begin to wonder whether the Government is conscious at all of the opportunities that the current windfall revenue, combined with political stability it enjoys, present to us.”
Sir Mekere said the Government had missed the opportunity to undertake radical changes to the structure of the economy, to the quality and level of economic and social infrastructure and to the public sector.