Dr Bhoe Tewarie

Trinidad and To­ba­go, af­ter 30 years of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) rule from 1956 to 1986, end­ed up with an emp­ty trea­sury af­ter 24 years of In­de­pen­dence with an oil boom that last­ed from 1973 to 1982.

Self-gov­ern­ment led by Dr Er­ic Williams, who ne­go­ti­at­ed for T&T’s In­de­pen­dence with both the British Sec­re­tary of State for the colonies, Regi­nald Maudlin, and with the then Op­po­si­tion Leader, Dr Rudranath Capildeo, and his team, at Mal­bor­ough House in 1962, did not lead to fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty, eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion, or de­vel­op­ment sus­tain­abil­i­ty dur­ing the first 25 years of In­de­pen­dence. The De­mas Re­port of 1983, un­der George Cham­bers, was an im­por­tant call for struc­tur­al ad­just­ment.

The Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) un­der then Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son, which gave the PNM its first elec­toral de­feat, had to bring in the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and had to in­tro­duce aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures. This caused rest­less­ness in the so­ci­ety, which was ex­ploit­ed po­lit­i­cal­ly by those who were un­com­fort­able with a change of gov­ern­ment, dis­turbed by the split in the NAR, who re­sent­ed aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and eco­nom­ic hard­ship, and who were dis­turbed by a par­lia­men­tary de­bate on cor­rup­tion.

De­spite the at­tempt­ed coup of 1990 and its at­ten­dant con­se­quences, eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery was set in mo­tion as the NAR ap­proached the end of its first term, and this growth mo­men­tum con­tin­ued through to the year 2000, un­der a PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, fol­lowed by Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, one term each, with eco­nom­ic con­ti­nu­ity over a 12-year pe­ri­od de­spite changes in par­ty gov­ern­ment, from 1988 to 2000.

In 2000, we had a dead heat elec­tion and a con­tro­ver­sial change of gov­ern­ment, and then a de­ci­sive vic­to­ry by Patrick Man­ning in 2001. Man­ning won an­oth­er term in 2006, and high spend­ing and deficit bud­gets be­gan un­der him in 2009 to meet in­creased ex­pen­di­ture sup­port­ed by an­oth­er oil boom which be­gan in about 1999 and con­tin­ued un­til 2008. This boom was fu­elled by nat­ur­al gas ex­pan­sion and the rise of LNG.

The Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship came to over­whelm­ing pow­er in 2010. Dur­ing that first Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, her gov­ern­ment had to strug­gle with the im­pact of the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis, our own cri­sis with Cli­co at home and high ex­pec­ta­tions. The tenure of her gov­ern­ment was stormy - al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, rup­tures in the coali­tion, a cer­tain amount of un­wield­i­ness, Email­gate, and a build­ing up of re­sent­ment. By 2014, the price of oil and nat­ur­al gas had be­gun to fall dra­mat­i­cal­ly as well.

As a coun­try from 2009 up to now, our State ex­pen­di­ture has been high, we have been liv­ing be­yond our means and have been bor­row­ing to keep things go­ing.

The first Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­tat­ed en­er­gy in­vest­ments from which the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion ben­e­fit­ed and fo­cused a lot of its time and ef­fort on so­cial in­fra­struc­ture such as schools, hos­pi­tals and so­cial wel­fare mea­sures.

When the last PNM gov­ern­ment came in­to pow­er in 2015, some ex­pen­di­ture was ini­tial­ly cut, but the struc­tur­al is­sues re­lat­ed to eco­nom­ic per­for­mance were nev­er re­al­ly ad­dressed. COVID was a ma­jor set­back, and in the first sev­en years of the Row­ley gov­ern­ment, T&T’s GDP de­clined by close to 20%. We are yet to re­cov­er from this. The fo­cus of the Row­ley gov­ern­ment was on en­er­gy - Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas and uni­ti­sa­tion of At­lantic LNG, and on sup­port­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor through the Ex­im­bank. The deficits con­tin­ued, the pub­lic debt in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly and the forex re­serves were falling, with no new sources of re­plen­ish­ment in sight.

And gangs, mur­ders, guns and crime had risen to an un­man­age­able de­gree. The pop­u­la­tion felt aban­doned by a self-ab­sorbed, un­car­ing gov­ern­ment.

The sec­ond Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment has in­her­it­ed a small­er econ­o­my, with re­duced rev­enue, a prob­lem­at­ic cash flow sit­u­a­tion, de­plet­ing forex. So, the ma­jor chal­lenges fac­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion are rev­enue, forex, eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, growth and jobs and how to move strate­gi­cal­ly to live with­in our means.

There are a range of known ways, tried and test­ed, to gen­er­ate gov­ern­ment rev­enue from tax and non-tax mea­sures. Ex­pen­di­ture cuts re­duce the amount of rev­enue one needs to gen­er­ate and bring the deficit down. Such mea­sures to­geth­er, will give fis­cal strength and im­prove fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.

There are a num­ber of known, tried and test­ed ways to in­crease forex earn­ings. Among the most ob­vi­ous are in­creased ex­ports, in­creased tourist in­flows and for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, es­pe­cial­ly if these bring ex­port mar­kets. This will help to di­ver­si­fy, re­struc­ture and be­gin to fos­ter growth and build sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Sim­ple, mean­ing­ful ac­tions, rather than grand con­cep­tions, can take us for­ward.

In­ten­si­ty of fo­cus and ef­fort seems to be work­ing on the crim­i­nal front. This same in­ten­si­ty needs to be brought to eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial ac­tion.