FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2025
VOLUME 119, No.03
Water disruption Page 5
www.thevincentian.com
Election candidates Page 6
Crime in SVG Page 12
$1.8M 2025 BUDGET:
EC$1.50
Tributes Pages 16-17
DeFreitas paid Page 28
Balliceux, which remains undeveloped and uninhabited, was the site of one of history’s worst genocides perpetrated by the British government.
FICTITIOUS SAYS BALLICEAUX TO CHANGE FRIDAY OWNERSHIP overall deficit being $639.9 million.
Stories by DAYLE DA SILVA
Not for the first time, Opposition Leader Dr. Godwin Friday sought to highlight flaws in the this country's Annual Budget presentation.
Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves delivered the 2025 Budget which is supposed to be the pathway to a ‘Resilient Future’.
LEGISLATORS APPROVED the 2025 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure on January 10 which amounted to EC$1,849,341,997, representing a 14.4% increase over the approved budget for 2024, when lawmakers approved a budget of EC$1.6 billion. Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves, in presenting the 2025 Estimates, explained that the Recurrent Expenditure, inclusive of Amortization and Sinking Fund
contributions amounted to EC$1,150,713,466 with Capital Expenditure EC$690,628,531. The 2025 Budget will be financed from Current Revenue of EC$907,729,320 and Capital Receipts of EC$943,612,687. The revenue side of the Budget anticipates an additional EC$104.7 million or 10% in tax receipts. The Budget, however, is another deficit budget with the
‘Fictitious’
Dr. Godwin Friday, Leader of the Opposition NDP said in his response to the 2025 Budget presentation in Parliament on January 14 that the opposition had heard and debated on various budget presentations over the years, and that government continues to present what the NDP termed a ‘fictitious’ budget. “… what we have come to expect is that what is in the Estimates or Budget is that we cannot take the Minister (of Finance) at his word,” Friday told members of Parliament, and reiterated that “the fiction that is presented in the Estimates and the promises made in the Budget, we cannot trust the government to mean what they say.”
‘Other Receipts’ The country has been through a lot, the opposition leader said, through the experiences of natural disasters, qualifying his admission with the observation that those disasters have been compounded by a lot of manmade errors, particularly from the government. Among the flaws presented over the years was that there is a big hole in the budget which was captured in the Capital Receipts item called Other Receipts. Continued on Frontpage.
“WHETHER BY NEGOTIATED purchase or acquisition, the island of Balliceaux will return to the Vincentian people in 2025.” So said Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves during his 2025 Budget presentation on January 13. Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves had announced in January 2024 that his Unity Labour Party government would begin the process of either purchasing or acquiring the privatelyowned 320-acre island, after it had been advertised for sale in 2023, at a price of US$30 million. The Prime Minister said then that that he had instructed the Chief Surveyor to provide a valuation of the island, to inform the offer to the owners. He said further that should the purchasing agreement fail; the government would invoke the law relating to acquisition and take the matter to a tribunal. Finance Minister Gonsalves updated the government’s position first saying, “In the past, our efforts focussed on defining the acceptable uses of the island and indicating that we would not approve an alien’s landholding license to any investor that sought to use the island in a manner that diminished its cultural and historical significance,” He continued: “By indicating an intent to buy the island ourselves, the Prime Minister effectively moved from defence to offence in our ongoing engagement with the (purported) owners.” According to Gonsalves, the situation as it existed today regarding Balliceaux was that the heroism and genocide of the Garifuna people have Continued on Frontpage.