An­tho­ny Wil­son

In the last two years, the me­dia and po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tive that presents Gov­ern­ment spend­ing as "ex­trav­a­gant," "waste­ful," and "non-pro­duc­tive" has been re­peat­ed so many times that it is now ful­ly en­trenched as an ar­ti­cle of faith. It is said, with great con­vic­tion, that the Prime Min­is­ter is frit­ter­ing away the coun­try's pat­ri­mo­ny (which has been re­named patrick­money) of state funds in an at­tempt to build a lega­cy for him­self, much like an Egypt­ian pharaoh seek­ing to build mon­u­ments that will cause fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to re­mem­ber his name.

If we are to be­lieve the poll pro­duced by Sel­wyn Ryan, 76 per cent of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of 1,003 peo­ple drawn from 11 eth­ni­cal­ly mixed com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try be­lieved that the Gov­ern­ment was squan­der­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey that could be more pro­duc­tive­ly used. And 80 per cent of the sam­ple, which is 800 of the 1,003 peo­ple in­ter­viewed, ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the way the Gov­ern­ment was man­ag­ing the econ­o­my. I found those poll num­bers so ex­tra­or­di­nary that I im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan to look for the em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence to sup­port the po­lit­i­cal and me­dia nar­ra­tive, now ap­par­ent­ly ad­vanced by the voice of the peo­ple through a sci­en­tif­ic poll.

What did I find?

In the eight-year pe­ri­od be­tween Oc­to­ber 2001 and Sep­tem­ber 2009 the Gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed $255.7 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to my cal­cu­la­tions of in­for­ma­tion con­tained in three pub­li­ca­tions of the Re­view of the Econ­o­my. In that eight-year pe­ri­od, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance doc­u­ments, the Gov­ern­ment spent $255.9 bil­lion. In oth­er words, over an eight-year pe­ri­od, the Gov­ern­ment bal­anced its ac­counts–spend­ing and sav­ing al­most ex­act­ly what it col­lect­ed (the Min­istry of Fi­nance ac­count­ing makes it clear that al­lo­ca­tions to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund and the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund come from re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture). Giv­en that 76 per cent of the re­spon­dents in a na­tion­al poll be­lieve that the Gov­ern­ment is en­gag­ing in squan­der­ma­nia, is in ef­fect wast­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey, I thought it might be in­ter­est­ing to find out how the Gov­ern­ment went about spend­ing $255.9 bil­lion in eight years.

Does the ev­i­dence sup­port the the­sis of squan­der­ma­nia and wastage?

It does not, in my view. Ac­cord­ing to the Re­view of the Econ­o­my from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Gov­ern­ment spent the fol­low­ing sums of mon­ey in five cat­e­gories: The ev­i­dence points to the fact that of every dol­lar col­lect­ed and spent in the eight-year pe­ri­od close to 50 cents was al­lo­cat­ed to sub­si­dies and trans­fers. An­oth­er 28.5 per cent of the $255.9 bil­lion that the Gov­ern­ment spent in eight years was al­lo­cat­ed to pay­ing and equip­ping pub­lic ser­vants. Is spend­ing $120.5 bil­lion to pro­vide sub­si­dies and trans­fers to the cit­i­zens of the coun­try an ex­am­ple of squan­der­ma­nia and wastage?

In 2008, when the Gov­ern­ment spent $28.3 bil­lion in sub­si­dies and trans­fers, among the al­lo­ca­tions were:

�2 Se­nior cit­i­zen's grant–$1.36 bil­lion

�2 Dis­abil­i­ty grant–$247.7 mil­lion;

�2 Ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions–$1 bil­lion

�2 pen­sions and gra­tu­ities–$1.66 bil­lion;

�2 Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties–$1.7 bil­lion;

�2 Lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies–$1.1 bil­lion

�2 WASA–$1.4 bil­lion

�2 Pe­tro­le­um sub­sidy–$2.1 bil­lion

�2 In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund–$7.9 bil­lion

�2 Her­itage Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund–$6.6 bil­lion

By way of com­par­i­son, in six bud­gets (1996 to 2001) the UNC?col­lect­ed $67.4 bil­lion and spent $68.8 bil­lion. The sta­tis­tics in­di­cate the fol­low­ing:

�2 that 33 per cent of the mon­ey that the UNC spent was on sub­si­dies and trans­fers;

�2 that 30.5 per cent went on wages and salaries;

�2 that 17.4 per cent went on in­ter­est pay­ments

�2 that 10 per cent went on goods and ser­vices;

�2 that 8.3 per cent was spent was on cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and net lend­ing;

Com­par­ing the six UNC bud­gets with the eight PNM bud­gets, sev­er­al things be­come ev­i­dent:

�2 In the eight bud­gets un­der re­view, this Gov­ern­ment has col­lect­ed vast­ly more rev­enue than the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion col­lect­ed in its six years main­ly be­cause of high­er petro­chem­i­cal prices and the ad­di­tion of the LNG fa­cil­i­ties in Point Fortin af­ter 1999;

�2 Hav­ing been in a po­si­tion to col­lect sig­nif­i­cant­ly more mon­ey, this ad­min­is­tra­tion has been able to spend sig­nif­i­cant­ly more mon­ey than the pre­vi­ous one;

n The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­lo­cat­ed a high­er per­cent­age of its to­tal bud­get to sub­si­dies and trans­fers than the UNC–47 per cent vs 33 per cent;

�2 The PNM has been able to al­lo­cate a high­er per­cent­age of its bud­get to cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture than the UNC–15.7 per cent vs 8.3 per cent;

�2 While pub­lic ser­vants have had salary in­creas­es dur­ing both pe­ri­ods, a small­er per­cent­age of the PNM's bud­gets was al­lo­cat­ed to wages and salaries than un­der the UNC–17.3 per cent vs 30.5 per cent;

�2 About the same per­cent­age of the bud­gets was spent on goods and ser­vices–11.2 per cent vs 10 per cent;

�2 Al­though the amount paid in in­ter­est pay­ments in­creased, the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion spent a small­er per­cent­age of its to­tal bud­gets in in­ter­est pay­ments than the pre­vi­ous one–8.6 per cent vs 17.4 per cent;

�2 That from the 2002 bud­get to the 2009 bud­get, the amount of mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed by the PNM to cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture in­creased by 1200 per cent;

�2 That from the 2002 bud­get to the 2009 bud­get, the amount of mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed by the PNM to trans­fers and sub­si­dies in­creased by 300 per cent;

�2 That from the 2002 bud­get to the 2009 bud­get, there was a 65 per cent in­crease in the al­lo­ca­tion to wages and salaries;

�2 That in the pe­ri­od, the al­lo­ca­tion to goods and ser­vices in­creased by about 340 per cent;

�2 There was a 65 per cent in­crease in the al­lo­ca­tion to in­ter­est pay­ments;

Can it be ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment is guilty of squan­der­ma­nia, wastage and frit­ter­ing away the coun­try's pat­ri­mo­ny based on the sharp in­crease in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture?

The an­swer to that ques­tion is that it de­pends on the con­text and how the ar­gu­ment is framed. If one agrees that the build­ings con­struct­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in this phase of its de­vel­op­ment are all as­sets which will ap­pre­ci­ate in val­ue over time, if well main­tained, just as build­ings con­struct­ed by the pri­vate sec­tor, the an­swer to the ques­tion is no. Al­so, how do we square the 65 per cent ap­proval rat­ing for the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, once com­plet­ed, with the 76 per cent who ar­gue that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is guilty of squan­der­ma­nia and ex­trav­a­gance? Fi­nal­ly read­ers, if you were the Prime Min­is­ter and had $255.6 bil­lion to spend over eight years, how would you have al­lo­cat­ed the funds dif­fer­ent­ly? Please write me at aw­il­son@ttol.co.tt and let's raise the lev­el of the dis­course on this is­sue. Mer­ry Christ­mas to all.