Gail Alexan­der

An eco­nom­ic "squeeze " will be un­leashed on work­ers and pen­sion­ers with the UNC's "cham­pagne promis­es on a mau­by bud­get".

That's the view of for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of­fi­cial Tahar­qa Obi­ka who crossed over the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Obi­ka, an econ­o­mist by pro­fes­sion, was re­spond­ing to re­cent UNC promis­es.

He said, "The Op­po­si­tion is promis­ing you the world, but can they af­ford to pay? The Op­po­si­tion’s shad­ow Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo this week claimed there would be no de­val­u­a­tion should they get in­to of­fice, but their par­ty’s eco­nom­ic plan tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. De­spite her strong de­nial, the on­ly of­fi­cial plan the UNC has – a rel­ic from 2020 – from which their mi­ni-fes­tos em­anate pro­pos­es re­mov­ing the man­aged float sys­tem."

"This is a move that would un­leash mar­ket forces on our ex­change rate, caus­ing de­val­u­a­tion and trig­ger­ing high­er prices. It would squeeze the same work­ing fam­i­lies and pen­sion­ers they claim to de­fend. Aside from this forex com­mu­ni­ca­tions co­nun­drum, they're plan­ning mas­sive spend­ing in the face of planned rev­enue cuts from low­er tax­es. All told, their pro­pos­als rep­re­sent a risky game with the na­tion­al econ­o­my."

Obi­ka said the UNC's 2020 eco­nom­ic plan was used con­sis­tent­ly with­out de­vi­a­tion to date.

"The Op­po­si­tion by stick­ing to the core el­e­ments of the old 2020 plan, has locked it­self in with a doc­u­ment that has ob­served flaws such as the claim that they will al­low the ex­change rate to be de­ter­mined by mar­ket forces, which means de­val­u­a­tion will oc­cur and we may be lucky if it set­tles at $15 to 1 USD."

Obi­ka added, "If you doubt me, South Africa, a more com­plex econ­o­my than ours worth around 350 to 400 bil­lion USD, had an ex­change rate of 7 to 1 USD in 2011. By 2015, in 4 short years, it sky­rock­et­ed to 16 to 1 USD, and now it is an abysmal 19 to 1 USD. This im­pov­er­ish­es salary work­ers and pen­sion­ers. The same trade unions that are now call­ing for the Op­po­si­tion to win will be clam­our­ing for her to leave on that score alone.

"No man­ner of press con­fer­ence an­nounce­ments will erase the fact that some­one se­nior in eco­nom­ics to Tan­coo in the eyes of the Op­po­si­tion Leader will be re­spon­si­ble for eco­nom­ic man­age­ment should they get in­to of­fice. Their plan will be to al­low mar­ket forces to set­tle the cur­ren­cy rate.

He claimed, "Tan­coo pro­vid­ed no cred­i­ble plan on how they will raise the ad­di­tion­al rev­enue need­ed to feed their promised spend­ing bo­nan­za. The Op­po­si­tion is flash­ing plans like they're play­ing with mo­nop­oly mon­ey. To fi­nance its lofty spend­ing promis­es, the UNC will have to bor­row at un­prece­dent­ed lev­els and sell off state as­sets. For the lat­ter, their de­ple­tion of the re­serves at NGC dur­ing their last turn at the crease should sig­nal to cit­i­zens how the bud­gets will be fi­nanced."

Obi­ka took is­sue with the UNC's so­lu­tion to find­ing mon­ey - re­duc­ing cor­rup­tion.

"It's un­se­ri­ous. The facts are that the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion was left in abeyance by the UNC-led gov­ern­ment, and it took a PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to im­ple­ment it. His as­ser­tion that his or­gan­i­sa­tion will re­duce cor­rup­tion will bring no com­fort to the pop­u­la­tion, giv­en the nu­mer­ous scan­dals that plagued their last turn at the wick­et. Even the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion claims were not sub­stan­ti­at­ed with a sem­blance of a plan."

Obi­ka said Tan­coo, "Seem­ing­ly pulled like a rab­bit out of a hat the sug­ges­tion that they will trans­form Moru­ga in­to a lo­gis­tics hub for South Amer­i­ca. If this were to be the case, it would need to be de­signed as a mega-project and would need to be sub­stan­ti­at­ed by bud­get­ed es­ti­mates. "

On the oth­er hand, he said the PNM "has walked the talk in Moru­ga" with projects which he de­tailed.

"Per­for­mance beats old talk. I'd ad­vise the Op­po­si­tion - for free - not to shine too much light on their record on cor­rup­tion and fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as they'd fall short on both. Moru­ga/Table­land res­i­dents will de­ter­mine if they val­ue the re­al work and re­al re­sults and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment plan­ning of the PNM or the grand-sound­ing promis­es of the Op­po­si­tion."