May 08
The appointment of the Moses Committee was a positive, if belated move by the Government to bring civil society more actively into the decision-making process. Had the National Roundtable Consultation held in January been a serious exercise in consensus building, the Government would hardly have made such a huge political blunder in the matter of the gas tax. Either it would have structured the budget in a different way, or the society would have been better prepared for the increases.
But the collective sigh of relief that greeted the partial rollback of the gas tax is far from justified. The truth of the matter is that we are faced with a fiscal and economic crisis of massive proportions. Some of the alarming numbers in the budget are:
