The fis­cal mea­sures as out­lined in the 2026 Bud­get, as im­por­tant as they are as to how the Gov­ern­ment will find rev­enue to ex­pend in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and give a boost here and there to meet­ing the many needs of the pop­u­la­tion, have been sim­ply stat­ed. How­ev­er, ab­sent are the re­al­ly im­por­tant plans and pro­grammes for di­ver­si­fy­ing in­to pro­duc­tion for ex­port and to re­place class­es of im­port­ed goods and ser­vices.

Use of that word “di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion” has be­come clichéd be­cause every gov­ern­ment, econ­o­mist, de­vel­op­men­tal spe­cial­ist, en­tre­pre­neur, re­porter-jour­nal­ist, man­u­fac­tur­er has been ad­vo­cat­ing it over the last 70-plus years. The hope is for it, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, to first be­come re­al through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ob­serv­ably planned strat­e­gy which aims at spread­ing the econ­o­my be­yond its colo­nial base of be­ing a raw ma­te­r­i­al sup­pli­er to ex­ter­nal mar­kets and a con­sumer of for­eign es­sen­tials plus.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dave Tan­coo did what his pre­de­ces­sors of the ma­jor gov­ern­ments of the last 30-plus years have done, that be­ing to deal in great de­tail with the fis­cal mea­sures for gov­ern­ment to meet its com­mit­ments to em­ploy­ment in the pub­lic ser­vice, the pur­chase of goods and ser­vices, the col­lec­tion of rev­enue through tax­a­tion mea­sures, the pay­ment of pen­sions and in­creas­es in salaries in the pub­lic sec­tor and the func­tion­ing in gen­er­al of the State.

Re­gard­ing the crit­i­cal el­e­ments need­ed at present in a na­tion­al bud­get that of out­lin­ing a set of im­me­di­ate­ly im­ple­mentable and in­no­v­a­tive plans and pro­grammes to take the coun­try in­to a de­vel­op­ment path, his state­ments were in fact clichéd rep­e­ti­tions of his pre­de­ces­sors of the two ma­jor par­ties and their coali­tion part­ners.

Yes, he iden­ti­fied and made a few state­ments of in­tent for tourism, non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing and agri­cul­ture, the three in­dus­tries which have been tar­get­ed by pre­de­ces­sor gov­ern­ments and min­is­ters of fi­nance, plan­ning and prime min­is­ters for 40 years with­out much suc­cess.

As stat­ed, the in­ten­tions in­clude en­cour­ag­ing in­creased for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments and the cre­ation of a few in­cen­tives and space for lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs in the three sec­tors. But what has been said is re­al­ly no dif­fer­ent from that which pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments have sig­nalled as their in­ten­tions with­out much ad­vance. Even the present min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for man­u­fac­tur­ing plus, has made the point that it is the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of sol­id and in­no­v­a­tive ideas which are go­ing make the dif­fer­ence.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter even made a ten­ta­tive and hope­ful step in con­ceiv­ing of the util­i­sa­tion of the ages ago aban­doned Ca­roni rac­ing com­plex for con­ven­tions. He even spared a word for as­pects of cul­ture and the Gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­tat­ing and guid­ing the growth of en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

The point here is that while there are many gen­er­alised state­ments of in­tent in his pre­sen­ta­tion, noth­ing ex­plodes as a great brand new ad­ven­ture in­to the cre­ation of a new and in­no­v­a­tive set of con­crete pro­pos­als for growth and de­vel­op­ment out­side of en­er­gy.

In op­po­si­tion, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar nev­er got tired of taunt­ing PNM gov­ern­ments right­ly ask­ing “Where are your plans?” At the same time she boast­ed that she and the UNC had the plans to make the dif­fer­ence. Well, Min­is­ter Tan­coo did not make them known to the pub­lic anx­ious­ly await­ing a new vista for­ward.

With­out such plans and pro­grammes be­ing ar­tic­u­lat­ed in a spe­cif­ic man­ner, in­clud­ing de­fin­i­tive word of in­vestors to be­come in­volved in list­ed projects then the state­ments are no more than play­ing to the au­di­ence as in an elec­toral cam­paign for of­fice. The point is that the par­ty has won of­fice, vague gen­er­al­i­sa­tions have to be turned in­to re­al­i­ty.

One of the things which can be con­clud­ed from the bud­get state­ment is the hope of the Gov­ern­ment that the un­cer­tain­ties sur­round­ing the Drag­on gas pos­si­bil­i­ties will be worked through in the favour of T&T.

The clos­est Min­is­ter Tan­coo comes to any­thing that can re­sult in the pro­duc­tion of plans and pro­grammes of sub­stance out­side of en­er­gy, is his in­ten­tion to es­tab­lish what he refers to as an Eco­nom­ic Re­silience Coun­cil, à la what the last gov­ern­ment had, that be­ing the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board.

“The Coun­cil is man­dat­ed to sup­port the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion by fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­vest­ment, fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion, pro­mot­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness, and guid­ing the tran­si­tion to­ward a knowl­edge-based, ex­port-ori­ent­ed, and in­clu­sive econ­o­my.”

With­out seek­ing to be cyn­i­cal of such a coun­cil, our gov­ern­ments have not been good at lis­ten­ing and tak­ing ad­vice and im­ple­ment­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties in a time­ly fash­ion even when they are made by in­sti­tu­tions they have es­tab­lished to ad­vise them; that was the case with the PNM gov­ern­ment in re­la­tion to the pro­pos­als of EDAB.

What should be in­struc­tive in what is to hap­pen with the ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil is whether or not the Gov­ern­ment in its ad­vance takes on the role and per­spec­tive of a lis­ten­er and be­liev­er in any­thing which does not come di­rect­ly from it­self.

One need­ed po­si­tion for the Gov­ern­ment to adopt is to lis­ten and learn from the many dif­fer­ent post-bud­get fo­ra in which crit­i­cal analy­ses are made of the state­ment, not mere pan­der­ing to the Gov­ern­ment for a po­si­tion on the in­side rail; it’s in­deed op­er­a­tional democ­ra­cy.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.