Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is right. It is not of­ten I have been able to say this in this space, but on the is­sue of en­er­gy prices be­ing cycli­cal and the coun­try not mak­ing de­ci­sions about re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture based on to­day’s wind­fall prices, the Prime Min­is­ter is cor­rect.

Row­ley point­ed out that of the es­ti­mat­ed $8 bil­lion in wind­fall earn­ings, $2 bil­lion had al­ready been spent due to high­er ex­pen­di­ture ap­proved in the Mid-year Bud­get Re­view and out of the ad­di­tion­al $6 bil­lion, he was pre­pared to make half of that avail­able to pub­lic ser­vants.

But the Prime Min­is­ter was al­so quick to ac­knowl­edge that the prices for the com­modi­ties were be­ing dri­ven by the war in Eu­rope, a lack of suf­fi­cient in­vest­ments by oil and gas com­pa­nies dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­downs and in­creased de­mand as the world emerges from the pan­dem­ic.

Some weeks ago, in his state­ment in recog­ni­tion of Labour Day, Row­ley placed on the ta­ble the wage bill cost to the Gov­ern­ment.

“The of­fer has since been in­creased to four per cent over a six-year pe­ri­od 2014-2019, which will cost Gov­ern­ment $2.5 bil­lion in back pay up to June 2022, and be com­mit­ted to a fur­ther $500 mil­lion, an­nu­al­ly, just for the civ­il ser­vice, teach­ing ser­vice, De­fence Force, pro­tec­tive ser­vices and dai­ly rat­ed work­ers,” he said.

He added, “To this must be added the cost of a wage in­crease for statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties and state en­ter­pris­es, which will in­crease the to­tal cost of a four per cent in­crease by as much as a fur­ther 50 per cent. Should ne­go­ti­a­tions be set­tled at eight per cent, those fig­ures will lit­er­al­ly dou­ble, tak­ing back pay to over $5 bil­lion and the an­nu­al re­cur­rent cost to over $1.5 bil­lion.”

It is well known that work­ers in gen­er­al are un­der pres­sure. In fact, all who are on fixed in­comes are see­ing the re­al val­ue of their earn­ings with­er away from the spec­tre of in­fla­tion. Even at five per cent, it means that un­less the sav­ings or in­vest­ments that you have are gen­er­at­ing re­turns ahead of the in­fla­tion­ary rate, then even those with sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings and in­vest­ments are wit­ness­ing the val­ue of their mon­ey de­cline.

So, no one is deny­ing that work­ers are un­der pres­sure, but we have seen this play out time and again, en­er­gy prices are cycli­cal, and my own read­ing of the sit­u­a­tion is that a fair price for a bar­rel of oil is clos­er to US$65 and not the US$100 we are see­ing to­day.

The Gov­ern­ment has to take ac­tion that is sus­tain­able and in the best in­ter­est of the over­all econ­o­my. When we are ne­go­ti­at­ing wages, it must be done in the con­text of the per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny or coun­try, it must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the abil­i­ty to pay with­out threat­en­ing the very vi­a­bil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny or econ­o­my and we must be pre­pared to recog­nise that the days of car­ry­ing work­ers for fear of union ac­tion are over.

If we ever want­ed an ex­am­ple of what that could mean, we on­ly have to re­mem­ber what hap­pened to Petrotrin which, to­day, the coun­try is still pay­ing hefty price for—the in­abil­i­ty of the union and the man­age­ment to work to­wards sav­ing the en­ter­prise that would have re­quired, among oth­er things, rad­i­cal changes in the num­ber of peo­ple em­ployed at Petrotrin and even per­haps the en­ter­ing of a joint ven­ture or out­right sale of the re­fin­ery.

In­stead, there was re­cal­ci­trance and well, we know how that end­ed.

On the is­sue of pub­lic sec­tor wages, the Gov­ern­ment must tell us how do these ne­go­ti­a­tions fall in­to the plan for digi­ti­sa­tion, how many peo­ple will have to be re­trained and, in some cas­es, re­placed by tech­nol­o­gy? We have to find out how pub­lic sec­tor re­form will play a key role in im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness and how do we redi­rect the pub­lic sec­tor, so it sees it­self as not just the pro­tec­tor of the pub­lic purse, but rather pro­vid­ing ser­vices to the pop­u­la­tion?

The Prime Min­is­ter can­not just by fi­at tell us what should be done with the wind­fall rev­enue. No one doubts the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Cab­i­net to make de­ci­sions that are in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try and, at the end of the day, the peo­ple of T&T made a col­lec­tive de­ci­sion to vote the PNM in­to pow­er. But sure­ly we must have a wider pub­lic dis­cus­sion on whether some of that mon­ey should, for ex­am­ple, be spent on fix­ing our roads to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and re­duce the cost to mo­torists of nav­i­gat­ing poor sur­faces that dam­age their ve­hi­cles and make dri­ving in­creas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s sug­ges­tion of a $1 bil­lion cap on the fu­el sub­sidy must al­so be viewed in a sim­i­lar way. I am on record in this space ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment needs to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce its sub­si­dies and trans­fers and that the help should be giv­en to the most vul­ner­a­ble.

Yes, the Prime Min­is­ter is right to raise the sus­tain­abil­i­ty ques­tion. Where he and his Gov­ern­ment have failed and con­tin­ue to let down the na­tion is in a work­able plan and the ac­tions to back it up that will lead to sus­tain­able growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my.

Dr Row­ley and his team, led by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, are yet, af­ter sev­en years in of­fice, to show any in­ter­est in grow­ing the econ­o­my out­side of the en­er­gy sec­tor. The con­stant ap­peal from the non-en­er­gy sec­tor for the con­di­tions to be cre­at­ed to al­low them to com­pete ap­pears to be ig­nored and in the case of a more com­pet­i­tive ex­change rate, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is on record as say­ing he is ig­nor­ing the calls.

T&T has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­crease sig­nif­i­cant­ly its tourism earn­ings and while I ad­mire the Min­is­ter of Tourism for his ef­forts, it is clear he is not get­ting the kind of sup­port or fund­ing that is re­quired to take the sec­tor for­ward and to mar­ket Des­ti­na­tion T&T.

The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to ig­nore the need to get projects go­ing by mo­bil­is­ing fund­ing in the pri­vate sec­tor and the de­vel­op­ment agen­cies. How are we, two years lat­er, still talk­ing about a pri­vate sec­tor part­ner for the Port of Port-of-Spain? Why is pri­vate cap­i­tal not in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of the fore­shore project? Why are we build­ing high­ways out of the an­nu­al bud­get al­lo­ca­tions?

So, Dr Row­ley, you are say­ing the right things. But the pop­u­la­tion would be for­giv­en if it finds your words ring hol­low.