The Tribune

CHANGING the status quo was the big phrase in the Prime Minister’s Budget Communication – so much so that it was the headline when the Office of the Prime Minister posted the speech online later in the day.

If one were to look closely through the details of the speech, however, the status quo is very much what we have.

The budget itself did not have any big game changers – and is largely just a continuation of what the government was doing previously.

That’s not necessarily a negative – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – but all the talk of change was not really backed up by the paperwork.

Nothing in the way of tax cuts – or increases, for that matter. No changes to VAT. A few duty changes, but people are hardly likely to be dancing in the streets at the news of duty reductions on laundry detergent sheets and fire extinguishers.

There was nothing definite on the future of BPL, nor was there any clarity on the government’s end goal in its battle with the Grand Bahama Port Authority – although again Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis went on the attack there, saying that the GBPA “has been earning profits at the public’s expense while failing to live up to their responsibility to develop Freeport”.

The government is putting its money – or our money, rather – where its mouth is on that, pledging to buy the International Bazaar, that rundown, faded relic of yesteryear. The price is astonishing, however. $30m seems very high for a property whose best days number in the decades ago, not just years.

Public sector workers will have pricked up their ears at Mr Davis saying that their salaries are too low. That will be good news for them – though of course every dollar extra that goes to pay workers is a dollar extra on the expenditure side of the equation, so that cost has to be met.

Those looking closely at the deficit figures were rubbing their chins and casting some doubt on how it will all add up.

All told though, it appears to be a budget that is neither a disaster nor a victory parade. The government has set out its path previously, and this keeps us on that course.

If everything goes to plan, the debt to GDP will come down, and the deficit will reduce – though that word “if” carries a lot of weight.

Meanwhile, if the government truly wants to change the status quo, then this budget will not do that.

If it wants to carry on the way it has been going – keep the status quo, in fact – then that is what it will do.

There will be lots more to emerge from the budget, and there will be things that will come from the debate afterwards, especially on the future of BPL. Some things right now raise an eyebrow, such as the insurance changes on newly licensed cars, though that might be a quirk rather than anything too onerous.

As ever, the devil is in the detail – and the point of the debate is to light up that detail. Let the discussion begin.