Budget priorities vs. development

[NewsWhore]

Diario Libre editor Adriano Miguel Tejada complained in a year's end editorial about the way in which the Fernandez government priorities are reflected in the budget allocations. He said that budgets should be national development instruments, but the Dominican budget reflects the fact that the government will spend more on paying the public debt and on the government payroll than on development investments this year. Furthermore, he complains that a relatively high percentage is spent on financing political parties and their campaigns. "It is unforgivable that with so many needs, thousands of millions of pesos are spent on the 200 or so members of Congress and that so much money needs to be thrown at the political parties that have shown no commitment at all to the development of Dominican democracy. Also questionable is the insistence on investing in projects of dubious social and economic yield when leaving the serious problems that are obstacles to the development of a nation without apparent solution," he writes. He concludes: "It is unfortunate that a matter of such importance is not even discussed, more so when there was not even a consensus among those who prepared it."

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