Kelowna

The CEO of the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce was generally pleased with the budget introduced Tuesday by the Liberal government.

Photo: Contributed

Chamber CEO, Caroline Grover

However, Caroline Grover says she had hoped it would have gone further.

It's a little more modest than I expected in some areas," says Grover.

"At the same time if we want them to deliver a balanced budget we have to understand there is a cost to that."

While the government chose to keep the Training Tax Credit, Grover says it would have been nice to see a significant increase in that area, especially for the Okanagan where people are trying to retain young workers coming out of Okanagan College and UBC Okanagan.

"Another thing business looks for is accelerated amortization rates to buy new equipment. It would have been nice to see more of that."

Grover says while a modest increase to health and education is important, the most important part of the budget for her was the retention of the province's AAA credit rating.

"One of the things that makes some of our provinces so attractive and our country so attractive is that we do have the Tripe A credit rating."

The budget forecasts an economic growth of about 2 per cent a year over the next three years and a deficit of $968M in 2012-2013 and surpluses of $154M and $250M in each of the next two years.