From the House by Pesi Fonua.

A national budget of $599.27 million Tongan Pa’anga was tabled into parliament on Monday, 10 June, by the Minister for Finance, Hon. Dr Pohiva Tu‘i‘onetoa.

The Minister initially labelled his budget as a “balanced budget”, but then settled to call it a “half-cast balanced budget”, because only 51%, ($305 million) is financed by the government itself.

The balance of 46% ($274.33 million) comes from foreign donors, and 3% ($19 million) comes from the sales of Bonds.

The new 2019-20 national budget of $599.27 million is $60 million less than last year's $659.3 million national budget.

It appears that government is trying to reduce its reliance on foreign donors to support its annual budget, but so far it is proving to be an up-hill battle.

Overseas donors

Last year, after passing the 2018-19 national budget, Tonga’s biggest ever, there was an urgent demand from overseas donors for government to amend its Foreign Investment Act - or they would withdraw their $35 million budget support.

A bill to amend the Foreign Investment Act 2019 was passed by the House on 26 February 2019.

Working programmes

This year Hon. Dr Pohiva Tu‘i‘onetoa told the House that Government does have a vision, which may be found in the Tonga Strategic Development Framework 2015-2025.

He was responding to the King's statement that the government lacks economic vision, made during the opening of the 2019-20 Parliament on 30 May.

The Tonga Strategic Development Framework 2015-2025 was published by the Ministry of Finance and National Planning back in May 2015.

The Minister of Finance elaborated that their vision is in the form of Nine Working Programmes for the coming Financial Year, from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020.

The nine working programmes are:

1. Public Sector Reform. He said that the Attorney General has six Bills to be passed. He also pointed out that 34% of the Budget is to finance two independent commissions, a Passport Commission and a Commission to investigate the burning of Nuku’alofa [2006]. There will also be a program to make education and healthy life style accessible to small islands.
2. Development of the Informal Sector. It is estimated that 80% of the population are in the Informal Sector. The objective of the program is to improve the lives of those in the Informal Sector to advance and become part of the Formal Sector. He said that China, India and the Tigers of Asia were developed this way, and that was how they developed to where they are today. That is also why they are negotiating for Pacer Plus.
3. Working program of Government. Fight against the use of illegal drugs. He said that 154 people had been arrested between 19 February and 18 April 2019.
4. To improve public places and roads. The basic vision is for a Masani Tonga (beautiful Tonga).
5. Support the Energy Division.
6. Digitizing of government services and the education establishment.
7. Universal Health coverage and fight against Non-Communicable Diseases. Currently, 12.1% of the National budget goes to the Ministry of Health.
8. Quality Education is the key for healthy life and quality education. Including an increase in the salary of teachers, and an improvement of the education system.
9. Land Management, relating to economic development. The land is our most valuable products.

Deadline

Tonga’s 2019-2020 National Budget is scheduled to be passed by the end of June,

But the debate is going through an unusual procedure. In the past the National budget is tabled into the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance and Public Accounts, which is supposed to go over the National Budget before it is tabled into Parliament. They did not so this year because the Minister of Finance, a member of the Committee, did not attend the budget meeting of the committee; and staff of the Ministry were also too busy to attend any of the meetings.

The budget debate appeared to skirt the procedural puzzles. A budget statement has not been released or distributed.

To further energise the budget debate, the Minister of Finance told the House that Samoa would have a Budget deficit of  $64m Samoan Tala in the coming Financial Year, and it was because of their hosting of the South Pacific Games, which the Tonga government did not want to host because we would have encountered the same problem.

Noble Nuku responded to the Minister of Finance’s comment on Samoa, and told him that he should not dwell on that issue at all.

The Minister then talked about his 40 years in the Civil Service, where he saw many “balloons”, but they all blew-up, and the ordinary people suffered.

“We have to be careful that our balloons don’t blow up,” he said.

The Minister said some of Tonga’s balloons that blew up included $90m Tongasat, a nearly $50m Trust Fund for the sales of Tongan Passports; the MV Ashika that sank with the loss of 74 lives; and recently the government's purchasing of the MV Niuvakai.

People's Representative Tevita Lavemaau, told the Minister that there was no need to go on about history.

But Hon. Dr Pohiva Tu‘i‘onetoa responded that they, the House, may be interested in what he knew of during his 40 years in government.

Eventually, debate on the Budget Statement of the Minister of Finance resumed. This appeared to be quite difficult without a Budget Statement to look at.

There is much left to debate.

After a Budget Statement goes through the Whole House Committee, they may move on and get into details over the budget as a whole.

But when the House closed on Thursday, the House had not voted on the Minister's “Budget Statement”.

MPs went home for the weekend agreeing that is very hard to find a copy of the Budget Statement. They said they needed to read it to follow the “balloons that blew-up”.