In April 2017 Sithanen said that the tram express would be a financial disaster because it would fail to cover costs and saddle future generations with debt. This was kind of funny for the bean-counter to say because as the chart shows government has had a revenue shortfall in all the years since 2006 which is the year he implemented his economic snake oil aka flat tax – there’s a flat-tax-related deficit as soon as growth is lower than the promised 8%.
In fact as from 2013 the revenue deficit caused by his regressive tax policies had grown big enough to fully pay for at least one 19-billion-rupee tram every single year – two as from 2016 and three as from last year. So in total there’s enough government money missing over the past fourteen years to pay for at least 10 trams (15 when you add the figures for the first seven years and the sums left over in the other seven).
In the meantime central government budgetary debt has risen by Rs172bn over the same period without any major national problems getting solved. I wonder if future generations will enjoy the terrible mess we’re in as much as we are.
It’s great we’re voting soon.
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