The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

and NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Reporters

The Ministry of Finance’s top official says the 2022-2023 full-year fiscal performance will be unveiled this week and asserted that the “numbers are very encouraging”.

Simon Wilson, the financial secretary, said the ministry has also been encouraged by the spending restraint across government during the first four months of the current 2023-2024 fiscal year although he provided no figures. He indicated that revenue and expenditure were tracking largely in line with May Budget projections.

“We are now in year 2023-2024,” he added. “We have completed numbers for four months, July, August, September, October. They are encouraging in terms of expenditure. Expenditure is in line with the Budget projections. Revenue is basically in line.

“Obviously, for us, most of our revenue is in the second half of our fiscal year, the period between January to May and June. So this is our slow period for revenue, but they are encouraging and there’s no reason for me to panic yet.”

The timing of the full-year 2022-2023 performance release, though, is likely to further fuel charges already voiced by the Opposition that the Government has delayed disclosing the figures to ensure they do not impact the outcome of Wednesday’s by-election.

Kwasi Thompson, the Opposition’s finance spokesman, last night said the Government was late in producing the June 2023 monthly and 2022-2023 year-end fiscal reports, as well as the 2022-2023 fourth quarter publication. In addition, he added that the July and August monthly fiscal reports are also past due, while the deadline to release September’s and the 2023-2024 first quarter update has now also arrived.

The disclosure of all these reports, and the deadlines by which this is to be done, is stipulated in fiscal transparency and accountability laws passed by Parliament. “It is very curious that the information has been kept back,” Mr Thompson said. “It is again very curious the information would be so late. It is very, very curious there’s so many reports that are so late.

“We wonder what’s in these reports to make the Government not release them on time? What does the Government have to hide? It’s very curious the manner in which they have delayed these reports. We are extremely concerned with what’s happening.”

Ministry of Finance officials, though, have in the past argued that an antiquated financial reporting and accounting system, coupled with dated information technology (IT), makes it extremely tough to meet these deadlines which some view as unrealistic given such practical constraints.

Mr Wilson, meanwhile, also addressed the impact of soaring inflation on both Bahamian consumer prices and the country’s outstanding US dollar denominated debt. While The Bahamas imports nearly all its inflation from its largest trading partner, the US, the rate of price increases in that nation is beginning to “moderate”, which should help ease The Bahamas’ own cost of living crisis in the short to medium-term.

Mr Wilson added: “Obviously, high inflation means high interest rates, which includes increases in our cost of debt, which impacts our cash flow and means we divert resources to pay interest. So, obviously, the Government as well consumers are uniform in a desire for a low inflation environment.”