interesting and a lot to take in.

First thoughts and let not fool our selves taxes will go up not now but later. The most expensive things are free. We will pay for the borrowing, we're just not paying for it in taxes now. Eventually, the bills will come due. That is unless we get an economic boom like never seen before.

I mentioned before we are always a hurricane or two away from blowing through any fiscal consolidation plans. I do wonder if the budgets account for these. Unlike pandemics, hurricanes are a way of life.

I mentioned before between 2019/20 and 20/21 we'll borrow about 2b dollars. Im still surprised that they didn't get those test kits as they were deemed too expensive. I assume those very kits will help this entire process and probably save in the long run.

Tax holidays are interesting concepts. I do wonder if a better approach would be to take an allotted amount and target those who need it for school shopping. Broad tax holidays mean people are can easily afford it and can pay the tax also get a break. So then govt loses revenue and helps those who also don't need it and get you later by increasing something else or cutting something else down the line.

like the statements on getting SOEs more independent financially. I do hope there SOE and other restraint measures work. We have however been hearing about this for years. If we don't get a hold of many of our spending issues other structural issues we're never going to be able to work our way out of jams.

Best of luck to our Bahamaland.

Disagree. They pay the fee anyway, it will go to us instead of uncle Sam I think its a great idea.

On one hand, it's illegal to use often re-used plastic shopping bags, but on the other hand, let's drill for oil.

The cost was raised as a reason for not getting kits . Yet we have an 800m and 1.3b deficit with lots of spending for programs out there. I'm sure they could have snuck in some for test kits.

worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Good website here: we are 113ith in Tests per Million.

"Critics, however, fear that health officials are not testing enough people to give an accurate sense of the spread of COVID-19 in communities."

Is this only a fear of critics? if the government itself thinks its testing enough... I have 10,000,000 test kits to sell you.

Not to mention they are implying of major spending in Works. So any small cut here and there will be offset. Years of not dealing with, unfunded pensions, SOEs, reforms in modernizing the public sector give us little to no room

Which is why I said i*if*.

Who knows what the terms are. For all, we know it could be a very short repayment term. In that case, it would be awful. We just don't know unit we see the details.

if this is a low-interest one-off no strings attached loan, then its a no brainer to take. There is no better time to access it than now.

I don't know when we ever had the headroom.

See Laing in 2013 commenting on the government's VAT approach.

"#Acknowledging that the Government’s finances were- and continue to be - on an unsustainable path due to heavy deficit spending during the recession, Zhivargo Laing, former minister of state for finance, told Tribune Business that an Ingraham administration would have targeted VAT implementation as “an urgent priority”."

"tribune242.com/news/2013/jan/25/fnm-wan…"

You have budgets here and there that have lower deficits, but we are always a US downturn or hurricane away, See Joaquin, Matthew Irma, Dorian etc.

What's worse, the unfunded liabilities that are off-budget. Those numbers dwarf anything in the budget.