Economist finds nothing glaring in BC budget document
Posted February 18, 2013 7:48 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VICTORIA (NEWS1130) – A former Bank of Montreal chief economist says there are no glaring problems with the projections in the budget the BC government is set to deliver Tuesday, but there is a call to turn down revenue expectations for natural gas.
Tim O’Neill’s 22-page report calls for additional prudence for natural gas revenue projections for this year’s budget and budgets for the following two years.
The report says BC’s natural gas revenue projections have been overstated in five of the last six years and O’Neill suggests extra caution is needed when factoring those revenues, especially because natural gas prices are at record lows. “My suggestions was that they reduce the revenue, the price forecast for natural gas is a consequence that would end up lower the projected revenues from that area.”
Some of the report’s numbers are blanked out to protect the final assumptions and projections in the budget, which is being tabled three months before the May election.
The Finance Ministry hired O’Neill in an effort to provide an independent assessment of the budget document.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong says the budget will be balanced and doesn’t contain the traditional list pre-election goodies. “When I became aware of the concern he enunciated, we had to move quickly because it had a material impact on the budget and some of the decisions we were making.”
The NDP says the reports fails to look at government spending.
