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Latvia's new government, the second headed by Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma, took office this Wednesday amid questions about its programme, which is being criticized by the local media and experts for vagueness and lack of focus.
On Wednesday, the three coalition partners, consisting of the centre-right Unity, the centrist Greens and Farmers Union (ZZS) and the right-wing National Alliance, signed a joint declaration in which they agreed on the key goals of the new government.
The government has defined economic growth, life quality of families and individuals, as well as national security as its top priorities in the document consisting of 183 points.
The new government programme is full of good intentions, but it lacks concreteness and focus, bank analysts surveyed by BNS believe.
Peteris Strautins, a macroeconomics expert at Latvia's DNB Banka, said he did not want to criticize the programme for its vague language and the overuse of verbs like 'promote', 'develop' and 'analyse', because as an analyst of macroeconomic processes he knew very well how unpredictable life could be.
"One must be realistic about how accurately targets for the next four years can be described. The economic and political environment is going to be highly changeable," Strautins said.
At the same time, the analyst said he would like the government programme to be more specific about the dilemmas and choices the new government was going to face as it got down to work.
"For example, there is a dilemma between two goals -- either we ensure basic education as close to home as possible, or we improve its quality. The government can try to achieve both goals simultaneously, but politics is the art of the possible. The government should have written its programme in two parts -- what it will be doing and what it will not be doing. Or at least it should have said that goal A is more important than goal B," said Strautins.
He also noted that the new government should make a clear choice regarding Latvia's taxation policy.
"In my view, making a clear choice about the taxation policy would be the most important task. In order to radically improve the quality of public services a substantial tax hike would be necessary, which in some cases might also be called an expansion of the tax base. I mean, tax revenue can be significantly increased without increasing the tax burden for the majority of the population," Strautins said.
Dainis Gaspuitis, a macroeconomics expert at Latvia's SEB Banka, told BNS that the new government programme was broad and full of good intentions, some of which could be questioned as hardly realistic.
The expert cited as an example the government's promise to raise GDP per capita by 5 percent annually. "It is hard to see the point of this target and its benefits to people. Instead, they should have set a real income growth target, which would be easier for people to understand," said Gasuitis.
Swedbank Latvia chief economist Martins Kazaks also described the government programme as "very broad", but said that it lacked accountability in terms of a quantitative measure. "Next time I would like to see something very short and specific, two pages maximum, containing concrete figures and principles," Kazaks said.
The new Latvian government took office this Wednesday after lawmakers approved the new cabinet of ministers in a vote at an extraordinary parliament session. Enditem
