2016 Budget will come as Expected in December

(ZIZ News) — Prime Minister, the Hon. Dr. Timothy Harris, has announced that his Team UNITY Administration is in the process of preparing its 2016 National Budget, which he says will be delivered in December.

“We will have an opportunity to bring our budget in December of 2015 and we are getting ready to do that and it will be a budget that is different in substance, in tone, and in style than that last presented by the rejected regime. We are a group of competent people. We know what to do and it is because we know what to do and we have the people’s trust why we are here,” he said.

Dr. Harris was at the time addressing nationals during the inaugural airing of “Working for You” on ZIZ Rradio on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Harris, who is also the Minister of Finance, rejected the notion that the new government should have already presented its own budget, shortly after taking office.

“A budget had already been passed for 2015 and certainly the government could have come in and said well, let’s do over a budget but, what good would that have done to the country to take the civil servants, already some of them in their stage of inaction, depression, and ask them to begin to redo a budget which really in real term was not absolutely necessary because we are a country of laws,” he said.

“The budget is a law. That law was passed in December of 2014, giving the legal requirements for expenditure and collection of revenues in 2015,” he added.

Dr. Harris presented two national budgets while serving as Minister of Finance under the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party Administration in 2008 and 2009.

During that period, St. Kitts and Nevis recorded its first surplus of more than $130 million and $140 million respectively.