The much heralded and long awaited 2012/13 Budget Appropriations Bill was passed in the Cayman Islands Legislative Assembly (LA) after only spending a couple of days with the Financial Committee to get their approval.

The only hurdle now is in order for the government to be able to function after Friday (31), the acting governor, Franz Manderson, must give his approval to the bill before the end of the day’s business.

However, this should be a formality as the UK has given its approval to the spending plans albeit with some conditions.

The budget includes government requiring to raise $650M over the next nine months. To even to try and achieve this the LA will have to pass new provisions into law very quickly.

Independent MLA for North Side, Ezzard Miller, highlighting this problem, said, “I do not believe there is any way in the current circumstances for government to collect $650 million from the economy. What happens when the economic advisor makes his trips back to the Cayman Islands and finds that the revenue and spending is not on track?”

There is no room for supplementary appropriations under the conditions imposed by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Miller was at pains to point this out. These conditions were not unreasonable and were imposed by the FCO because of the incompetence of the UDP government and its failure to fulfill the promises it had made to the UK, he added.

“This [a three year plan] was the government’s plan, not the FCOs, and it was government which failed to do the right thing,” he pointed out. “While the UDP administration is claiming significant cuts, government spending has actually increased by more than $30 million.”

He said the government’s plan to amend the Public Management and Finance Law and the Public Service Management Law to be able to re-centralise the financial and human resources functions of government to cut costs “should have been done more than two years ago”.