Ke­jan Haynes

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert an­nounced yes­ter­day that the coun­try has, for the first time in 14 years, achieved a fis­cal sur­plus, the first since 2007/2008.

In a re­lease, Im­bert said the to­tal rev­enue in fis­cal year 2022 was $54.21 bil­lion, or $10.88 bil­lion more than orig­i­nal­ly es­ti­mat­ed. The to­tal ex­pen­di­ture was $53.12 bil­lion, or $690 mil­lion more than orig­i­nal­ly es­ti­mat­ed.

He not­ed, though, that the Bud­get Di­vi­sion ad­vised that there may be an­oth­er $100 mil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture in 2022 that is still to be brought to ac­count.

“Tak­ing in­to ac­count the ad­di­tion­al $100 mil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture that may be brought to ac­count in due course, the pro­vi­sion­al out turn for fis­cal 2022, in­stead of a deficit, is there­fore a fis­cal sur­plus [sic] of $1.08 bil­lion, or +0.6 per cent of GDP,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The min­is­ter added that the ad­di­tion­al mon­ey could now be used for flood re­lief.

“This im­proved out turn for fis­cal 2022 has giv­en the Gov­ern­ment the ad­di­tion­al fis­cal space to im­ple­ment the $150 mil­lion pro­gramme of dis­as­ter re­lief and in­fra­struc­ture work an­nounced by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day (Thurs­day),” Im­bert not­ed.

In re­sponse to the an­nounce­ment, for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne said, “While I think we should be all glad that T&T achieved a fis­cal sur­plus, this is an en­tire­ly for­tu­itous event due to the high en­er­gy prices and has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with any plan­ning or man­age­ment by the min­istry.”

He said the sur­plus is due to high­er prices, not high­er out­put, since T&T has no con­trol over mar­ket prices or how long the war in Ukraine will last.

“Ab­sent both de­vel­op­ments, the tax rev­enues would not have in­creased by such a large per­cent­age. The sur­plus is good news but en­tire­ly for­tu­itous,” Browne added.

Op­po­si­tion MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo held a sim­i­lar view, say­ing, “It’s pos­si­ble. The en­er­gy boom prompt­ed by high en­er­gy prices be­cause of the Ukraine/Rus­sia con­flict have al­lowed high­er rev­enue. How­ev­er, hav­ing had more mon­ey, what have they done with it to im­prove the eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture of the coun­try? How will the coun­try grow?”

Speak­ing on the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to use part of the sur­plus to fund flood re­lief, Tan­coo said, “It is sad that hav­ing not spent hun­dreds of mil­lions al­lo­cat­ed for flood re­lief and in­fra­struc­ture, that this Min­is­ter boasts now about sur­plus. The Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties con­tin­ue to be out of align­ment with the needs and as­pi­ra­tions of cit­i­zens.”

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said al­though the an­nounce­ment was good news, it was a lit­tle strange the coun­try went sud­den­ly from be­ing in re­cov­ery mode from COVID-19 to a sur­plus.

“I think it would be im­por­tant for the min­istry to al­so re­lease the ex­pen­di­ture lines from the var­i­ous min­istries so that we have a clear sense of where this sur­plus and this bal­anced bud­get is com­ing from,” Attzs said.

“Be­cause clear­ly, the min­is­ter him­self didn’t even have a line of sight of this when he pre­sent­ed the bud­get for 2023.”

The fi­nal ac­counts for fis­cal 2022 must be re­port­ed to Par­lia­ment by the end of Jan­u­ary 2023.

Mean­while, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lumkin said the an­nounce­ment by Im­bert, “brings lit­tle to no com­fort to the ed­u­ca­tors of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as the cost of es­sen­tial goods and ser­vices con­tin­ue to erode their stag­nant salaries. This same Min­is­ter has re­ferred the salary ne­go­ti­a­tion to the In­dus­tri­al Court with­out giv­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion process a de­cent chance of be­ing ex­er­cised. The ex­ter­nal labour mar­ket sur­vey was not se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered even though it was mu­tu­al­ly agreed up­on by the two par­ties.”

He added: “This an­nounce­ment is just an­oth­er rhetoric by a politi­cian who seems to have no con­sid­er­a­tion for the work­ing class and is in­tent on bring­ing false hope to the na­tion at this time when the cit­i­zens are at an all-time low.”

He added, “How will this wind­fall trans­late in­to the up­lift­ing of the na­tion? How will the av­er­age cit­i­zen ben­e­fit? Will schools get the much-need­ed fund­ing to meet the day-to-day ex­pen­di­ture which they need to sup­port cur­ricu­lum im­ple­men­ta­tion and to car­ry out mi­nor re­pairs? Will schools be up­grad­ed and re­paired to an ac­cept­able stan­dard so as to avoid harm to its oc­cu­pants? Will ed­u­ca­tion­al ser­vices be up­grad­ed and teacher train­ing im­ple­ment­ed in a sys­tem­at­ic man­ner as to re­tool the im­ple­men­tors of the cur­ricu­lum? What about in­cre­ments and ar­rears aris­ing from late pay­ments?

“TTUTA looks for­ward to the an­swers to these ques­tions among oth­er ques­tions in re­la­tion to the claim by the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Fi­nance,” he said.