The Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun) has said that its pro­pos­als for the na­tion­al bud­get 2011-2012 are not re­strict­ed to labour spe­cif­ic is­sues, but are meant to ad­dress broad­er macro­eco­nom­ic is­sues. Fi­tun has rec­om­mend­ed that the poli­cies and mea­sures of the 2011-2012 na­tion­al bud­get be geared to­wards trans­form­ing the lo­cal econ­o­my.

Sus­tain­able growth

Fi­tun has pro­posed that any growth in the econ­o­my must be sus­tain­able. "In the past, the PNM gov­ern­ment placed all their eggs in one bas­ket-the en­er­gy sec­tor-and, in par­tic­u­lar, the gas sub-sec­tor. What is re­quired is the ex­pan­sion of the pro­duc­tive base of the econ­o­my, by cre­at­ing over the long-term, pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty with­in the econ­o­my." "It must be not­ed that while the in­comes of work­ing peo­ple are in­creased, their spend­ing specif­i­cal­ly on do­mes­tic ac­tiv­i­ty, such as con­struc­tion, trans­porta­tion, etc, would tend to in­crease. This would re­sult in a mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect with­in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my." Fi­tun said the is­sue of what the Gov­ern­ment can and can­not af­ford, as in in­creas­es in wages and salaries and im­proved terms and con­di­tions, needs to be as­sessed in this broad­er per­spec­tive of us­ing in­creased wages and salaries as a con­trib­u­tor to­wards growth.

"One of Fi­tun's ma­jor con­cerns over the last year was the very slow start-up of projects un­der the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP). Part of this was at­trib­ut­able to the long de­lay in ap­point­ing state boards as well as po­lit­i­cal and bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays in the re­lease of funds for ap­proved bud­gets. It goes with­out say­ing that if Gov­ern­ment cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture comes both slow­ly and in small quan­ti­ties, it will not lead to a growth mo­men­tum," Fi­tun said in a state­ment.

Eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion

Fi­tun has sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment en­cour­ages en­tre­pre­neur­ship as a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion tool. "It is not pru­dent for the econ­o­my to be heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on a sin­gle sec­tor, for when there is a de­cline in a said sec­tor in ei­ther out­put or price, the en­tire econ­o­my fol­lows a sim­i­lar trend." "These ini­tia­tives must be geared to­wards the pro­duc­tion of unique prod­ucts which emerge for our cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion. One such ini­tia­tive should seek to link our cul­ture and cre­ative imag­i­na­tion to cer­tain man­u­fac­tured goods which have as their es­sen­tial in­puts in the pro­duc­tive process, do­mes­tic agri­cul­ture and our lo­cal food. All of the ac­tiv­i­ties along the val­ue chain, such as pro­duc­tion, mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, could all be un­der­tak­en by mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es."

Among Fi­tun's pro­pos­als is that Fi­tun al­so pro­posed that state-owned Caribbean News Me­dia Group (CN­MG) be con­vert­ed in­to a pub­lic broad­cast­ing cor­po­ra­tion with a clear man­date to pur­chase re­gion­al and lo­cal films sim­i­lar to the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. In the area of man­u­fac­tur­ing, Fi­tun said a lo­cal but sus­tain­able busi­ness sec­tor must be cre­at­ed. "The is­sue of mar­ket ex­pan­sion should be ex­plored. While T&T cur­rent­ly en­joys a sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket share of Cari­com mar­ket, oth­er po­ten­tial mar­kets should be iden­ti­fied and ex­plored. Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est should be the neigh­bour­ing and ex­pan­sive mar­kets of Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca and the emerg­ing economies of Brazil, Chi­na and In­dia."

In the area of agri­cul­ture, Fi­tun said food sov­er­eign­ty is im­por­tant. "Fi­tun calls for the ur­gent im­ple­men­ta­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive land use pol­i­cy which would guide a process of land re­form to en­sure spe­cif­ic ar­eas of land are guar­an­teed for agri­cul­tur­al use. Such a process is im­por­tant now as agri­cul­tur­al land is be­ing gob­bled up by spec­u­la­tors and/or per­sons seek­ing to make prof­its in food and dri­ving farm­ers off the land." Fi­tun said that ad­di­tion to land re­form, an­oth­er ob­jec­tive re­lat­ed to agri­cul­ture must be es­tab­lish­ing small farm­ers as the back­bone of agri­cul­ture. "Fi­tun sup­ports ini­tia­tives to ex­pand pro­duc­tion in rice, co­coa, wheat and fish." Fi­tun called for fur­ther di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor. "With re­spect to en­er­gy ser­vices, this rep­re­sents an­oth­er po­ten­tial rev­enue earn­er." Fi­tun al­so pro­posed that rev­enue from the en­er­gy sec­tor should be chan­nelled to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of the on­shore sec­tor in such ar­eas as man­u­fac­tur­ing and agri­cul­ture.

In­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment

Fi­tun said while ini­tia­tives were pre­scribed in the last bud­get to build the growth mo­men­tum specif­i­cal­ly the growth pole ini­tia­tive, lit­tle has been achieved so far in this area. "With spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the south-west penin­su­la, the de­vel­op­ment of a ship build­ing in­dus­try should be ac­tive­ly pur­sued, which would guar­an­tee busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and job cre­ation. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, poli­cies must be de­vel­oped for the La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Labid­co) and oth­er in­dus­tri­al es­tates in La Brea so that these com­mu­ni­ties and its peo­ples could be de­rived max­i­mum ben­e­fits from these es­tab­lish­ments."

Rev­enue mo­bil­i­sa­tion

Fi­tun rea­soned that in or­der to im­ple­ment the above pro­pos­als and rec­om­men­da­tions and oth­er poli­cies geared to­wards achiev­ing growth and de­vel­op­ment, re­sources need to be mo­bilised.

To achieve this, Fi­tun raised the is­sue of tax col­lec­tion. "Un­paid tax­es rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant source of po­ten­tial re­sources. While the tax amnesty, as pro­posed in the na­tion­al bud­get of 2010 to 2011, has proven to be suc­cess­ful in re­coup­ing some funds, a sig­nif­i­cant lev­el of un­col­lect­ed tax­es still re­main, which, when paid, would pro­vide the Gov­ern­ment with fi­nan­cial re­sources for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­posed poli­cies." Fi­tun claimed that the present Gov­ern­ment failed to col­lect $180 mil­lion be­cause the land and build­ing leg­is­la­tion should have been re­in­stat­ed, and the prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion re­pealed.

"This rep­re­sent­ed a loss of po­ten­tial rev­enue, a loss which could have hard­ly been af­ford­ed in these times of rev­enue con­straints." Fi­tun al­so called for a re­view of the rate of cor­po­rate tax. "Our rec­om­men­da­tion is that a tax rate of 30 per cent (the rate from 2003-2005) should be levied on busi­ness­es above a cer­tain size as de­nied by spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria. How­ev­er, should the busi­ness in­vest in de­fined ar­eas, which would con­tribute to sus­tain­able growth and de­vel­op­ment, tax cred­its could be earned to re­duce the rate to the cur­rent lev­el of 25 per cent."

Eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion

Fi­tun stat­ed: "The ob­jec­tive of growth is mean­ing­less un­less there is an eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of the ben­e­fits of that growth. There is no doubt that dur­ing the pe­ri­od of very rapid growth (2001-2008), which it­self was pre­ced­ed by sev­en years of slow­er growth, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the pie was in­equitable. At the end of the 'boom,' we had a so­ci­ety char­ac­terised by greater in­equal­i­ty. Dur­ing the past two re­ces­sion­ary years, the poli­cies have wors­ened that in­equal­i­ty. This bud­get must ad­dress this is­sue."