In last Sunday’s column I repeated the bold assertion, which I had made a year ago that a National Assembly Budget Office is “needed to restore trust in official economic data.” Important as this is, in truth a National Budget Office (NABO) can potentially achieve far more for the restoration of the political economy of Guyana, as I shall argue in this week’s column.
In this regard, readers should note that since its first introduction to the United States Congress in 1974, Budget Offices have spread to several countries around the world and in the process they have acquired the more generic label of fiscal institutions. Presently, those bodies are located in both the legislative and executive branches of government. In the particular case of Guyana, however, I strongly recommend the location of the Budget Office in the National Assembly, for the several reasons outlined below.
Reasons
First, I believe the generic term fiscal institution has been adopted largely because of an implicit bias towards fiscal (taxation) concerns in the operation of these bodies. While fiscal concerns are
