On 5th December 2009, My mobile phone made me woke up earlier than all the days a text message from a friend of mine. I was so eager to read the message as it came very early in the morning thought that it might be a good message. When I went through the message it really made me laugh because it was all about a message which has been passing phone to phone about 2010 budget. It took moment to think and understand what exactly trying to say in the message.
To me, with my limited knowledge, budget is something that should reflects things that can be done or possible within the financial year by not depending the loans but rather with the help of governement income. In this case, I am not at all surprised to see that there was nothing mentioned in the budget about our island.
In the past, budgets were prepared by mentioning many projects to be carried out in various isands with the mere hope of getting loans from financial organization and as a grant aid. Consequently these unsaid wirtten statement were considered as a promise. Often the case is that, at the end of the year, none but few project were materialized and while others were left with nothing. Further, the this practice was a cheap technique which have been using the old regime in order to gain the political advantages by manipulating the the right picture. For example, You go through the budgets of last 10 years from 2008, most definitely what you will see is simply written projects rather than materialized ones. Let's take the case of our island, For how many years has it been mentioned in the budget to be carried out the sewerage system with help of Kuwait Fund which originally started recently only. Let alone not this example, the case of reclamation project is one of the most evident example. So how many other islands were there simply neglected in a similar fashion by simply mentioning in the budget projects to be done.
I would not call these things anything other than false promises a cheap techinique to gain the political advantage from our people by making them day dream.
I would like call all thimarafushians that, never ever get carried away so easily, there is no harm even if nothing mentioned in the budget and mentioning something in the budget won't guerentee you anything. Consider the past examples, we brought this coalition led government not to repeat the same old mistakes that we were truely neglected. If not what is the difference between having an autocratic regime and a democratic one.
The annual net income of our country is around MRF 7 billion and out of that 5 billion are paid to to government employees and with the remaining 2 billion we had to manage all the other things including infrastructure projects. thus, what we can do is to increase our productivity rather than simply staying back at home and expecting governement will do everything. This is a free market economy and everything will depends on demand and supply. Take the example of Singapore and her condition in 1970's and now and have a vision in our mind and be faithful, Insha Allah, our faith will pay back the dividends we deserved.
