PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Geoffrey Henry

RAROTONGA, Cook Islands (The Cook Islands Herald, March 7) - Shortly, the Cook Islands Ministry of Finance and Economic Management will commence discussions with other government ministries in preparation for the 2006/2007 Budget process.

The law requires that this process be preceded by a Budget Policy Statement, which should show the direction in which the Budget will point the nation. Recent history has shown that a Demo Budget Policy Statement is a rehash of a Capital Improvement Project Budget Policy Statement with a slightly different structure, different buzzwords and a slight change in emphasis. I suspect that the forthcoming Statement will repeat history.

The Budget preparation is an annual event that is often filled with challenges, frustration, uncertainty and even cynicism on the part of Heads of Ministries who must present a business plan to support their budget bids but are never sure what priority changes might do to their Budget.

Perhaps the time has arrived for a decisive change in our approach to the preparation of the National Budget. I am suggesting that we should set in place a process that maximizes effective consultation with a good cross section of the community before the Budget is finally struck and presented to Parliament. The Budget should not be seen as a Ministry of Finance and Economic Management document. Nor should it be seen as a government document. It should instead be seen as a national document, a people’s document in which there is a significant input from our people. The current process, however, does not permit this.

The nearest we ever came to a Budget consultative process was the National Development Council (which the Maoate government abolished) and the Budget Committees comprising people from the private sector, which I set up, and the composition of which the present Minister of Finance keeps changing. When preparing the 2004/2005 Budget, I had a consultative process in mind with which I wanted to experiment for viability and credibility before giving it statutory permanence. The proposition was this.

In February of every year a National Summit is convened to discuss, analyze and make proposals on issues of national concern from economic development, social development, resource management, the environment, good governance to people issues. The intention was to involve as many from every sector of the community who can make substantive contributions to the consultative process. Lead speakers would be chosen from here and Cook Islanders overseas who would be asked to make written presentations. Papers would be prepared by the National Policy Unit laying out the issues on each subject matter before the Summit in order to help focus the discussions. This Summit must take place and conclude before the Budget Policy Statement is written and published. This ensures that the conclusions of the Summit or the proposals emerging from it form the basis of the Statement, which in turn influences the Budget that is presented to Parliament. This also helps ensure that the Statement and the Budget are not Ministry of Finance and Economic Management or government documents but are in fact the result of consultations with our people.

From an administrative point of view the current system works for, at the end of the day, a document laying out how the country’s money is to be spent is prepared, completed and presented to Parliament in due time. The process, however, is often very divisive both at the preparation stage and in Parliament because the final product, being based on Party manifestos, often has a significant political content. More importantly, the current process allows little consideration of the real needs of our people, the matters of real concern to them, the things in life that bring to them enduring joy and happiness and peace of mind.

The current Budget Committee concept should be retained to put the Budget together perhaps with more from the private sector and the civil society and to also do an audit of government performance prior to the annual Summit.

The current process tends to engender divisiveness at the administrative and political levels and within the community as many criticize government’s declared priorities. Ministries vie fiercely against one another for a larger share of the national pie. Some go through the whole process rather mechanically knowing all the time that their bids would be cut anyway. This often encourages them to cheat by fattening their bids in anticipation of cuts. When the document finally ends up in Cabinet another fight occurs as Ministers seek to increase their allocations often leading to a distortion of policies as a result of political demands. When the budget is finally debated in Parliament a further fight occurs mostly because of politics and the fact that the Opposition is never involved in the preparation of the Budget.

I say it is time for a change. It is high time that we politicians realize that we are not the sole repositories of wisdom. It is time we trusted our people for ideas about how their lives can be bettered and the well being of the nation improved. Let’s do more consulting. Let’s bring our people and every Parliamentarian into the budget preparation process so that, as I said in my 1991 Financial Statement, "together we make the Cook Islands economy receptive to each of our needs so that every ambition will find an opportunity, every child a career, every dream a reality."

[Sir Geoffrey Henry is the Leader of the Opposition Party in Cook Islands]

The Cook Islands Herald: http://www.ciherald.co.ck/

Copyright © 2004 Cook Islands Herald. All Rights Reserved