OPPOSITION LEADER SAYS GOVERNMENT FAILS TO LAYOUT FISCAL STRATEGY AS REQUIRED IN LAW

The Davis Administration continues to display its contempt for the rule of law and the Bahamian people by its now habitual refusal to abide by even the most straightforward legal requirements to report to the country regularly on its financial affairs. By law, the Fiscal Strategy Report 2022 was due in November of last year. It is now months late. Not only has the government not produced and published the report, the Minister of Finance has yet to explain its tardiness nor

provided a timeline when we will receive the required report.

The Fiscal Responsibility Council was to have published its assessment of the government’s Fiscal Strategy Report 2021 from the first quarter of last year. They were also to have published its assessment of the government’s 2022/2023 budget by last July. We have yet to see any of these reports in the public domain. The Council must advise the public as to what is fueling their

delay in publishing their reports as required by the law.

The Minister of Finance must see to it that these reports are completed and published. Finally, more often than not, the Davis administration has been late in the submission of its monthly and quarterly budgetary reports as required by the Public Finance Management Act. The report for November 2022 should have been published within the first week of this month. We have gotten no explanation as to why this report is late. We remind our jet-set Prime Minister that as the Minister of Finance, these failures fall directly under his charge. As we have said before, he needs to curtail his extensive globetrotting and instead focus on the statutorily required work that Bahamians are paying him to do. The Prime Minister remains the very picture of rank hypocrisy when he tells Bahamian small businesses to abide by the law while he fails to ensure

that his government does the same.