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As usual, I must begin by publicly expressing thanks to the various officials and officers who have worked largely behind the scenes to prepare me for this presentation. This includes my personal staff, the Financial Secretary and Deputy Financial Secretaries and staff at the Ministry of Finance, the Governor and the staff at the BOJ, the Director General and the staff of the PIOJ, and the Director General and staff at STATIN. This is my sixth opportunity to open the Budget Debate. More significantly, it represents the last Budget Debate for the century and therefore, places some obligation on us to reflect on the recent past, in terms of economic management and to look forward, both in terms of establishing realistic targets and objectives, but also to ensure that we learn from errors of the past. In speaking of errors of the past, it is all too common whereby we in Jamaica seek to emphasize and dwell on what has gone wrong. As is only too obvious, the only person who makes no errors is he or she who has never tried. Therefore, I will spend some time indicating lessons which we should have learnt over the last two or so decades, which should increase the country's chance of policy success in the future
OUTLINE OF PRESENTATION: The structure of my presentation will follow a predictable pattern. I will first review developments over the past fiscal year, spending some time on international developments, as increasingly, these have as great an implication for the domestic situation as those which are totally domestic in nature. Naturally, I will also review specific domestic developments, with a discussion of the major macro economic results. I will then look at developments in the real economy, focusing on the operations of FINSAC, and special areas of the productive sector. I will say something about an increasingly important aspect of the economy - the informal sector. I will then outline the macro-economic programme with the major targets for the three-year period 99/2000 to fiscal year 01/02. I will then move on to the Expenditure Budget, to be followed by the way in which we intend to finance the $160 billion of expenditure. I will then wrap up the presentation by looking back and then looking forward, with some emphasis on the need for new approaches and recruiting new public servants for the next millennium. || |Table of Contents | Next ||
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