Prof Hamid Ghany

Econ­o­mists are fre­quent­ly used for dis­cus­sions on elec­tion analy­ses, but po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists are nev­er used to analyse bud­gets. There is a flaw in that ap­proach. A bud­get is a po­lit­i­cal doc­u­ment that in­cludes eco­nom­ic da­ta to jus­ti­fy the po­lit­i­cal choic­es that have been made.

For ex­am­ple, Kevon Felmine, re­port­ing in the Guardian on April 4, 2025, said:

“Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has warned that if the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) wins the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, the TT dol­lar could be de­val­ued to US$1 = TT$15. He based his al­le­ga­tion on UNC’s eco­nom­ic pro­pos­als out­lined in their Na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion Mas­ter Plan for 2020 to 2025. Young was speak­ing at a rainy Har­ris Prom­e­nade, San Fer­nan­do, dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing on Wednes­day night. He re­vealed that he had con­sult­ed with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul, Min­istry of Fi­nance tech­nocrats, and in­de­pen­dent econ­o­mists to ex­am­ine the UNC’s plans.”

The pol­i­tics of this de­val­u­a­tion the­o­ry, ad­vanced by for­mer prime min­is­ter Young in con­sul­ta­tion with his then new fi­nance min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul, who re­placed Colm Im­bert on March 17, was flawed.

This was clear­ly pol­i­tics try­ing to trump eco­nom­ics on the cam­paign trail, as the pre­dic­tion has not come to pass af­ter last Mon­day’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Felmine’s re­port, Young said: “So I sat with the econ­o­mists, and I said, What is it go­ing to de­val­ue to? How can they af­ford this that they’re promis­ing? I stand here to­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go, that if the UNC gets in­to pow­er on April 28, 2025, no mat­ter what they say, they’re go­ing to de­val­ue our dol­lars 15 to 1.”

The elec­torate was be­ing asked to be­lieve, back in April, that the UNC would de­val­ue the dol­lar from TT$6.80 to $15.00 to one US dol­lar. It did not hap­pen.

How­ev­er, Young did not stop there. Ac­cord­ing to Felmine: “Young said the IMF has been ad­vis­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to float the dol­lar, but for the past decade, the PNM has re­sist­ed. He not­ed that the UNC’s plan ef­fec­tive­ly aligns with the IMF’s ad­vice, warn­ing that de­val­u­a­tion would lead to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased liv­ing costs. Pro­vid­ing ex­am­ples of the po­ten­tial im­pact, he said a 2kg pack of flour would rise from $18.49 to $40.85, a 2kg bag of rice from $29 to $64, and an 85g pack of cur­ry pow­der from $12 to $26.50.”

Based on Felmine’s re­port, in hind­sight, Young was sim­ply scare­mon­ger­ing the pub­lic. The ex­act op­po­site has hap­pened in this bud­get. Flour, rice, and cur­ry pow­der (his cho­sen items) are not go­ing up in price.

De­val­u­a­tion and food prices were not the on­ly ar­eas that Young ad­dressed in his speech on Har­ris Prom­e­nade back in April. Ac­cord­ing to Felmine: “He crit­i­cised the UNC for propos­ing to start pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at a 10 per cent in­crease while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly promis­ing to slash tax­es. He said his gov­ern­ment be­gan wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at 4 and 5 per cent be­cause that was what the coun­try could af­ford, ex­plain­ing that a 10 per cent in­crease would cost tax­pay­ers $6 bil­lion in back pay, while a 14 per cent in­crease would amount to $8.5 bil­lion.”

Young said that that was “not re­spon­si­ble”. Some­how, un­der dif­fer­ent man­age­ment of the econ­o­my and the po­lit­i­cal will to fight for the work­ing class, it was not that dif­fi­cult for the pol­i­tics to trump the eco­nom­ics on this one. The Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) has been in­struct­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to send a new re­mit to the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) to of­fer 10 per cent to pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees. This con­tra­dicts what was said on the cam­paign trail by Young.

The PNM has boxed it­self in­to an an­ti-work­er agen­da on the is­sue of wages and salaries. Af­ter ten years of hard times, it seems that the PNM is not pre­pared to make the po­lit­i­cal sac­ri­fice to give the work­ing class an ease from the squeeze of the last 10 years.

In­stead, their ar­gu­ments make it look as if they would pre­fer to de­ny the work­ing class some per­son­al ben­e­fits. Rather than con­struct­ing ar­gu­ments to give all the rea­sons why the State ought not to make its own sac­ri­fice to fa­cil­i­tate them af­ter so much pain and dis­com­fort over the last ten years, their im­age and in­tent come across as an­ti-work­er.

That hurt them on the cam­paign trail in April and con­tin­ues to hurt them now. The UNC has de­liv­ered on its promise to the PSA. For some rea­son, that has an­gered the PNM and some eco­nom­ic ex­perts who are still try­ing to give us all the rea­sons why the work­ing class is sim­ply not worth it.

This bud­get is more about po­lit­i­cal promis­es made and kept than eco­nom­ics.

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of the UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.