By Tusika MartinIn a dramatic presentation, Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh yesterday wrapped up the week-long debate in the National Assembly on the 2009 budget.Throwing hard and low blows at the opposition parties, Dr Singh yesterday said that he thought that they would have used the debate of the Budget to present alternatives, recommendations and suggestions of moving the country’s economy forward.The Finance Minister pointed out that while he was pleased with the length of time devoted to the budget debate, it is regrettable that the overwhelming majority of speakers on the opposition benches ‘squandered the golden opportunities’ that were presented to scrutinise the policy agenda with rigour and to offer feasible,NFL Jerseys China Cheap, practicable options for consideration.Instead,Cheap Hockey Jerseys, he added, the National Assembly was regaled with recycled overworked and ill-informed quotations.In one instance, he said, instead of debating the facts of the budget, one Member of Parliament spent 15 minutes of his speech describing the cover of the budget, then spent about 15 minutes quoting from a Barbadian document.“The presentation was symptomatic of much of what we had to endure coming from the Opposition,” Singh said.Responding to an article in yesterday’s newspaper headline: ‘Finance Minister presents inaccurate deficit – Murray,’ the Finance Minister said that this is an issue he had explained to Murray some time ago.“I had pointed out that one does not change every week or every month or every year the manner in which you compute an economic variable. The measurement rules do not change. The presentation in the table that Murray sought to highlight is one that shows inflows and outflows relative to the Consolidated Fund.”The Fiscal Management and Accountability Act 2003,Discount NFL Jerseys, Dr Singh told the National Assembly, states clearly that the proceeds of all loans and grants should be paid into the consolidated fund.“So if you will have a presentation of receipts into payments from the Consolidated Fund, you have to by law include the disbursements of loans and grants in that table. That is required by law for the purposes of computing the fiscal deficit, not the deficit of the Consolidated Fund.”According to the Minister, the fiscal deficit in 2009 is projected to be 6.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, adding that this is a considerable reduction.The fiscal deficit in 2005 was 13.7 percent of the GDP since, according to Dr Singh,Cheap NFL Jerseys co, there were significant investments in infrastructure and the Skeldon Sugar Factory.“There have been commitments to a medium-term past of reducing the fiscal deficit. Such a past will be consistent with fiscal sustainability and debt sustainability.”Guyana is on the verge of qualifying, he said,Wholesale Jerseys, for significant external assistance under the Millennium Challenge Account, having achieved a considerable reduction in the fiscal deficit.“I hope that this attempt to misrepresent the measurement of the fiscal deficit is not an attempt to scuttle the country’s eligibility for this very substantial external assistance which will constitute explicit favourable recognition of the strong economic performance.”During next week, the estimates expenditure will be considered by the committee of supply. Dr Singh described the presentation of Leader of the Alliance for Change, Raphael Trotman, as ‘very unfortunate.’“I don’t believe that any of us on this side of the House dispute the fact that more needs to be done. What is being done needs to be done more quickly; what is being done needs to be done better; but for them (the Opposition) to adopt a posture which can only be for the purposes of ‘grandstanding’, histrionics and dramatics is a great ‘tragedy’” Trotman,Cheap NFL Jerseys, like other members of the Opposition, the Finance Minister said, sought to paint a picture that ‘nothing positive is happening in Guyana.’The Minister described Trotman as ‘a stranger to the truth’. He said that if that is the way the opposition will approach the entire issue of ‘working together’ it is difficult to get that notion started.Just under two weeks ago, Singh presented the 2009 Budget totalling $128.9B.