NEW YORK, USA
The Antigua and Barbuda government is projecting a fiscal deficit of more than US$100 million for this year.
Addressing a town hall meeting here over the weekend, Prime Minister Gaston Browne said the deficit “of about 130 million US dollars is due to overspending.
“Now, one would expect that when you have a government that would have borrowed extensively, they would have borrowed about two and a half billion dollars over the 10-year period that at least they would run a fiscally tight budget to make they have capacity tp pay the debts.”
The former administration during the presentation of the last fiscal package had projected a surplus of EC$10 million (US$3.7 million) for 2014.
But Browne told Antigua and Barbuda nationals residing here that national borrowing surpasses what the country earns annually.
“These are issues we will have to address and we have estimated that based on the debts that we actually left out of the national debt calculation that our debt to GDP (gross domestic product) is perhaps in the region of 125 to 130 per cent”.
Browne said that the figure is “extremist high” when compared to the global benchmark estimated at no more than 60 per cent.
“So it is about twice what it ought to be,” Browne told the town hall meeting.
Browne led his Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) to victory in the June 12 general elections, removing the United Progressive Party (UPP) headed by Baldwin Spencer that had been in office for the past 10 years.
— CMC
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Antigua and Barbuda"s fiscal deficit surpasses US$100m
