Hon. Ralph T. O’Neal, Opposition Leader and former Premier of the British Virgin Islands, expressed his quite critical opinion on the Premier and Minister of Finance’s state of the Territory’s finances address. In his radio address, Hon. O’Neal pointed to an attempt to play tricks for excluding monies collected from the financial industry.
On December 6, Premier Orlando Smith told that the National Democratic Party (NDP) Government has found hardly any financial resources and many financial commitments and bills to be paid. He had pointed out that current projections by the Ministry of Finance indicated that based on the spending patterns for this year, total revenue will be in the region of US$268 million, representing a shortfall of US$18 million compared to what was budgeted and approved by the House of Assembly for the 2011 fiscal year.
According to Hon. O’Neal, Premier Smith revealed that cash advances as of November 4 were slightly over US$40,000,000, but did not take into account the receipt from the Financial Services. He added that while he could not say what the exact figure was, based on previous experience the figures for November could from fifty to sixty million dollars.
Hon. O’Neal also spoke on the claim that the Auditor General Report of 2007 showed that the National Democratic Party left healthy cash balances of eighty-two million and was in compliance with all the provisions of the borrowing guidelines. According to the Opposition Leader, on first reading the claim could seem to be true, but he pointed out that in 2010 the Virgin Islands Party Government had to introduce and pass legislation covering some forty-six million for over expenditure in 2006. He also noted that, prior to being voted out of office at the November 7 elections, the Virgin Islands Party Government put in place some austerity measures and therefore did not to lay off any of the people, or reduce salaries.