Murray slams non-mention in budget of 'rife corruption'
Stabroek News
April 8, 2004
PNCR Member of Parliament Winston Murray has decried the absence of a single mention of the word 'corruption' in the 2004 National Budget since he believes that graft is rife in government spending.
Assessing this year's National Budget at a forum held at the National Library on Monday, he said there are instances where many projects were, and are being, executed with substandard specifications and materials. "Yet the full sums for the projects are disbursed," he said.
He cited the case of the stone scam in which large sums were paid to suppliers overseas for stone that was never shipped to Guyana. He added that what was amazing was that no one was taken before the courts, even though the Auditor General "pointed in obvious directions."
He said at one time it was estimated that 10% of the capital expenditure leaked out of the system and into "unauthorised pockets."
"At the rate of 10% with the capital expenditure of over $20 billion in 2003 the sum of $2 billion, i.e. $2,000 million, would have gone into unauthorised pockets in 2003," he said.
In addition, he said, Minis-ter of Finance Saisnarine Kowlessar projected an overall deficit on the Central Government accounts of $25.9 billion in 2004, "which means that the government would be spending $25,900 million more than it expects to receive in revenues for 2004," he said.
He added that of this amount, the budget is projecting to receive grants amounting to $10.3 billion, leaving a gap of $15.6 billion to be financed. He said this deficit represents 10.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) compared with 9.1% of GDP in 2003.