PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

A bud­get cu­rat­ed with elec­tions in mind.

This was the as­sess­ment of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo's 2027 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion by po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr. In­di­ra Ram­per­sad on CNC's post-bud­get analy­sis show Re­al­i­ty Cheque on Mon­day night.

"Next year is an elec­tion year. It's a lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion year, so I think the mid-term bud­get is go­ing to be craft­ed that way, and to some ex­tent this one as well, be­cause we would no­tice that this was a bud­get, I think, for the work­ing class," Dr. Ram­per­sad said, as she out­lined fis­cal mea­sures that ben­e­fit the work­ing class, with the vast ma­jor­i­ty of in­creas­es tar­get­ting lux­u­ry items.

How­ev­er, Ram­per­sad did ques­tion the Fi­nance Min­is­ter stat­ing that food in­fla­tion had de­creased but gro­cery prices were still high.

She said, "We're not see­ing it in re­al terms. You go to the gro­cery and you buy a few items, and it's $2,000."

Econ­o­mist Dr. Ronald Ramkissoon shared con­cern that with every­thing promised in the bud­get, there was a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that the deficit had been un­der­stat­ed. He warned that com­mit­ting to such ex­pen­di­tures with­out se­cured rev­enue could un­der­mine the coun­try's long-term goals.

"In­di­ra wise­ly point­ed out not to for­get we have our lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions com­ing up, and all gov­ern­ments re­spond to that and some­times make de­ci­sions that come back to hurt the econ­o­my, to hurt good fi­nan­cial man­age­ment," Ramkissoon said.

The pan­el said the gov­ern­ment did have some in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es such as the in­tro­duc­tion of the elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge on high-con­sump­tion res­i­den­tial house­holds, but Eu­gene Tiah, CEO of the Caribbean En­er­gy Cham­ber, ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with the use of sub­si­dies which fall short of eco­nom­ic ef­fi­cien­cy

"I think that we have to come up with a more tar­get­ted method of ap­ply­ing sub­si­dies. I think that this one-size-fits-all is not a good ap­proach. It irks me when I see a Porsche pull up and fill­ing up with sub­sidised diesel. That's not the in­ten­tion," Tiah said.

He said en­er­gy pric­ing must en­cour­age con­ser­va­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty rather than waste.

"We can't have a pric­ing mech­a­nism where every­one is quite com­fort­able leav­ing ap­pli­ances on, with­out any pro­duc­tive use com­ing from it. I thought we would have heard more about pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy," said Tiah.

Econ­o­mist Dr. Jamelia Har­ris agreed that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the elec­tric­i­ty sub­sidy al­so raised ques­tions about the use of sub­si­dies in the coun­try.

She asked, "If we say those who could af­ford to pay more should pay more, then we have that con­ver­sa­tion. But I don't think we should pick and choose when it is ap­pro­pri­ate to say that, and when it's not,"

She al­so ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment's job cre­ation tar­get for the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, not­ing that the tar­get would out­pace his­toric pe­ri­ods of growth in the coun­try.

"I was look­ing for­ward to see­ing some­thing a bit more struc­tured and a plan that says this is how we're go­ing to get these mul­ti­ple jobs we're go­ing to cre­ate," Har­ris said, "If we go back to 2000 to 2010, this is dur­ing Vi­sion 2020 and the re­al eco­nom­ic boom that we had dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the econ­o­my cre­at­ed 60 to 70,000 jobs over a 10-year pe­ri­od. So I find it strange to think that we're go­ing to cre­ate 72,000 jobs be­tween now and 2028. So I have a lot of ques­tions still, re­al­ly."

Dr Ramkissoon and Tiah both agreed they had ex­pect­ed more struc­ture in the pre­sen­ta­tion, where­as Dr. Ram­per­sad ar­gued the pre­sen­ta­tion was sol­id and prop­er­ly put to­geth­er.