Tomorrow, the budget circus will be in town again. The minister of finance, like his predecessors, will take on the air of someone who, with some linguistic gymnastics, will re-invent the wheel. Press photographers will click thousands of photos of him – it is the only time they are allowed into parliament – and the magic will start. He will delve into the achievements of the government and dwell lengthily on each. Pravind Jugnauth will have to be creative here as the only concrete action – in any case designed to grab votes and now proving to be very costly – is the increase in pension. His colleagues in government will break the dull monotony of the atmosphere in the House by self-importantly rapping the tables. Expect that sound to be even louder this year as the minister of finance also happens to be the leader of the biggest party in government. So the ambitions of every member of the ruling coalition will express themselves enthusiastically, not unlike the familiar hand-kissing exercise. In times like these, my advice to you is treat the budget spectacle for what it is – a circus. Enjoy the show – if you can – but do not try to understand the tricks behind it.

The next day, experts – real and self-appointed – will dazzle you with some economic jargon – the same you heard last year but you discarded from your long-term memory: ‘Seasonal adjustment factors’, ‘deficit funding stimulus’, ‘resource gap’, ‘bubble economy’, ‘asset price inflation’, ‘Gini coefficient’.

Don’t bother looking these up. In a couple of months, you will curse the politicians and the experts for having wasted a few days of your life trying to interest you in a futile activity. Those who think that I am cynical just have to go over last year's budget speech and look around them: No-tax budget, eight smart cities, five ‘technopoles’, 25,000 new jobs to be created, 5.3% growth, transforming Port Louis into a regional hub, new road projects... How much of this have you seen a year down the road?

For those of us who have no ambition of fully understanding the economy, a nation’s budget is not dissimilar to a household budget. It is about balancing accounts: a combination of raising taxes, curbing expenditure and borrowing more. But then, public debt has ballooned and, at over 65% of the GDP, is already beyond sustainable. This is partly due to the increased pension in an aging country and partly to ministers and other government members having been spending our money as if there was no tomorrow. Add to that the proliferation of State Owned Enterprises (SLDC, MauBank, NIC, etc.) and other wasteful quangos that provide cushy jobs for cronies who have great expertise at squandering public funds, as exposed every year in the Audit Report. Top it all up with the extravagant legal fees paid to lawyers we had never heard of just because they are close to power.

The government has only two ways to balance its accounts: either increase taxes or reduce expenditure. Lepep campaigned on the latter but all we have seen so far is breaking all records in expenditure on a restricted class of over-privileged individuals and their families. The minister of finance cannot possibly look at any other way of reducing our national debt than through clipping the wings of wasters and substantially decreasing their expenditure. By decreasing, I mean in a way that makes a difference. The little public relations exercise of reducing the ridiculously high per diem by some insignificant percentage is preposterous and will not make a dent in our debt. Taking the route of increasing taxes – particularly the VAT – would be suicidal. VAT is a terrible tax that hits all of us very hard but hits the poor and the underprivileged the hardest. Increasing it would send the message that the poor have to continue to tighten their belts and skimp to subsidise the lifestyle of the over-privileged few. I doubt that the minister of finance wants to send that message. I hope – for his own political survival – that he does not!

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