The public asked to pay attention to the annual budget statement

By Aabigayle McIntosh

Budget officials within the Ministry of Finance want members of the general public to pay keen attention to the annual presentation that will be delivered by Prime Minister Gaston Browne.

They outline several reasons why the report should be important to the public and what exactly they should be looking for.

Acting Budget Director Sandra Henry Parker explained the contents of the budget affects everyone directly.

“Its important to know what affects you directly, it’s important to know what things are important in education, healthcare. If we do not have the appropriate revenue coming in to help pay for the services then your healthcare is affected the same goes with the Education system.

“Even look at our roads we complain about potholes which are so true,” Parker said.

Deputy Budget Director Cordella Weston is encouraging members of the public to be better stewards of their finances.

She opines that this can be done by finding out how the government has been allocating public sector funds.

“What has the government being doing with my money, because it is our money. Its also good to listen to find out what it is the government has been doing with it and what ideas they have in which to grow the economy so that we can make even more money.

She also points to some of the terms that each person should listen out for.

” Macroeconomic terms like GDP, Gross Domestic Product, which is the entire output of your economy, you also have GDP growth and growth rate which is measuring the rate of the output of how our economy is growing from year to year.

“You also have economic development which is when you have several years of constant growth, that indicates that you would have had economic development. Then you also have terms like inflation, everybody knows that term inflation where that’s the movement in prices,” Weston explained.

The size of the budget will be published on Friday.