The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Opposition’s finance spokesman yesterday blasted the Government’s “tardy” last-minute bid to obtain Parliamentary approval for an extra $250m spending in the current 2025-2026 Budget year.

Kwasi Thompson, the east Grand Bahama MP, slammed the Davis administration for tabling the enabling legislation on the last day of the 2026-2027 Budget debate in the House of Assembly. He argued that this was designed to avoid Opposition and public scrutiny of “extravagant spending” by the Government in the run-up to the May 12 general election.

“The Opposition decries in the strongest terms the Government's tardy submission just today of supplementary budget requests that total close to $250m in additional spending,” he added.

“They have laid the related Bills and estimates on the last day of the Budget debate in the House of Assembly when most members of Parliament would have already spoken - and without any time for the Opposition to scrutinise.”

Mr Thompson branded this as an “intentional omission” on “a critical matter” for MPs that was “hidden until the last minute”. He added: “Clearly the Davis administration had known long ago that it needed an additional $250m to meet its extravagant spending in the lead-up to the election.

“Yet neither the minister of finance [Michael Halkitis] nor any Cabinet minister made it known that the Government had overspent its Budget sums. Why was this not stated during the Budget communication?

“And even though they were aware of this over-spending long before the Budget exercise got started, none of them could explain to the Bahamian people the magnitude of their overspend,” Mr Thompson further asserted.

“Now, Parliament will be expected to vote on these additional sums without any clear justification as to how the Government managed to blow its expenditure budget without ever letting the Bahamian people at any time that $250m in new bills were on the way.

“The Government has also projected an equal amount in additional revenue even though through nine months of the year they remained far behind their original target. The FNM demands the Government provide a full explanation and justification for why it just discovered it needs close to $250m in the very final month of the fiscal year.”