In a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment pub­lished yes­ter­day in all three dai­ly news­pa­pers, the Gov­ern­ment makes the point that it has been "search­ing for the right equi­lib­ri­um...to main­tain the sta­bil­i­ty of our fi­nances and at the same time redi­rect ex­pen­di­ture to re-ig­nite growth." The ad­ver­tise­ment re­ferred to last month's as­sess­ment of the coun­try's debt rat­ing by Moody's which point­ed to the sta­ble con­di­tion of T&T's fis­cal sit­u­a­tion with the Gov­ern­ment point­ing out that "a sta­ble con­di­tion does not mean that we must now put it at risk." Point­ing to the risk to the econ­o­my that might emerge as a re­sult of fis­cal ex­cess­es, the ad­ver­tise­ment goes on to ar­gue that while the out­look may be en­cour­ag­ing, "we are very de­ter­mined that these risks not be al­lowed to go un­mit­i­gat­ed." There is al­so a clar­i­on call to the pop­u­la­tion that "this is not the time to lose ground nor cause eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion to put the na­tion at risk. We must cre­ate some breath­ing space for the econ­o­my to start the growth process in earnest."

Few would ar­gue with the Gov­ern­ment about the need to place fis­cal pru­dence at the fore­front of its de­lib­er­a­tions or about the need to place em­pha­sis on the risk that the econ­o­my faces from "fis­cal ex­cess­es" as well as on the need to place the econ­o­my on a growth tra­jec­to­ry. These are mes­sages that the Guardian has re­flect­ed con­sis­tent­ly in its ed­i­to­ri­als and we com­mend the Gov­ern­ment for its res­o­lu­tion in stay­ing "on mes­sage." While there is much that is laud­able in the ad­ver­tise­ment, once again the Gov­ern­ment has opt­ed to at­tempt to per­suade the pop­u­la­tion gen­er­al­ly and the labour move­ment more specif­i­cal­ly about the strength of its eco­nom­ic ar­gu­ment with­out pro­vid­ing the na­tion with the most re­cent fis­cal in­for­ma­tion and with­out pro­vid­ing the as­sump­tions on which it is build­ing its fis­cal sce­nar­ios. With­out the ben­e­fit of the fis­cal num­bers and the un­der­ly­ing as­sump­tions, it is dif­fi­cult to en­ter­tain an ar­gu­ment about what will or will not "put this econ­o­my at risk in the fu­ture."

The Gov­ern­ment should em­brace the con­cept of trans­paren­cy with re­gard to the coun­try's fis­cal ac­counts and not wait un­til the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to de­liv­er its ac­count­ing of the ex­pen­di­ture and rev­enue pic­ture. Sec­ond­ly, while the Gov­ern­ment's ef­fort to achieve the "del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween the is­sues of pub­lic en­ti­tle­ment on the one hand, and tax­a­tion and bor­row­ing on the oth­er" is ap­pro­pri­ate and laud­able, its point about redi­rect­ing ex­pen­di­ture to re-ig­nite growth de­serves fur­ther elab­o­ra­tion.

Is the Gov­ern­ment sig­nalling a strat­e­gy of redi­rect­ing ex­pen­di­ture away from pub­lic sec­tor salaries and to­ward in­fra­struc­tur­al spend­ing? If this is the redi­rec­tion of ex­pen­di­ture re­ferred to in the ad­ver­tise­ment, is the Gov­ern­ment con­fi­dent that this strat­e­gy will reignite growth to the ex­tent nec­es­sary to kick­start the econ­o­my?

This ques­tion is asked in the con­text of the point made in the Sun­day Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al about the need for the Gov­ern­ment to spend more time con­cep­tu­al­is­ing and plan­ning its in­fra­struc­tur­al projects to en­sure that such us­es of tax­pay­ers' funds are not sub­ject to cost over­runs and long de­lays. While in an econ­o­my like this one there is need for Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture-how­ev­er it is di­rect­ed-the Gov­ern­ment al­so needs to take cog­ni­sance of pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment and em­brace the new mode of think­ing that has places em­pha­sis on the con­cept of pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships in the build­ing of na­tions.In the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, there was a great deal of jus­ti­fied con­cern that Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture was crowd­ing out the pri­vate sec­tor. There was al­so con­cern about the se­quenc­ing of ex­pen­di­ture and the in­fra­struc­tur­al pri­or­i­ties that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion chose. It is most im­por­tant that small, open, new economies learn all the lessons of their re­cent his­to­ry as the mar­gin be­tween eco­nom­ic suc­cess and fail­ure for coun­tries in the 21st cen­tu­ry is nar­row­ing.