JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Econ­o­mist and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs is hop­ing to see a strength­ened re­la­tion­ship be­tween this coun­try and Venezuela through so­lid­i­fied gas deals be­ing iden­ti­fied in this year’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez buried the hatch­et dur­ing their vis­it to the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York last month. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in­vit­ed to Venezuela and ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to Ro­dríguez, with ex­perts hop­ing that the gas deal be­tween the two coun­tries can fi­nal­ly get off the ground.

Speak­ing out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, Attzs said her hope was for the Gov­ern­ment to go a notch above the typ­i­cal rhetoric.

She added that her hope was for Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo to ad­dress debt man­age­ment dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion.

“There’s al­ways been a con­ver­sa­tion around the ap­petite, the healthy ap­petite on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket to pro­vide Trinidad with loans, which is a good thing be­cause there’s a con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my, but it al­so adds to our debt bur­den, so I would love to hear about what is the sta­tus of that.”

An­oth­er key com­po­nent, she said, was Tan­coo’s han­dling of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, call­ing on him to make pro­vi­sions for them in the Bud­get, un­like what was done last year when there was no men­tion of pay­ing set­tled ne­go­ti­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion.

She added, “I would like to see some set­tling down in terms of what is the eco­nom­ic plan for Trinidad and To­ba­go mov­ing for­ward, not sim­ply do­ing house­keep­ing and ad­dress­ing some of the is­sues that they would have in­her­it­ed, but look­ing at set­ting a clear path for Trinidad and To­ba­go for the fis­cal 2027 and cer­tain­ly un­til 2030 when a next elec­tion is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due.”

Fol­low­ing last year’s Bud­get an­nounce­ment that re­moved one dol­lar per litre from su­per gaso­line, Attzs said the Gov­ern­ment re­port­ed it to be an ad­di­tion­al $300 mil­lion ex­pense. Her Sen­ate col­league, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, said his aim was to con­tin­ue the Gov­ern­ment’s thrust to im­prove the coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plans.

“We are fo­cused on the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my, be­yond oil and gas, on three plat­forms: trade, in­vest­ment, and tourism. We are fa­cil­i­ta­tors and pol­i­cy-mak­ers, and we are fo­cused on en­cour­ag­ing the pri­vate sec­tor, lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, to in­vest and recre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment for them to do so.”

The pos­si­ble con­struc­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tres is one such aim, he said, adding that the coun­try should cap­i­talise on the grow­ing need for dig­i­tal ex­pan­sion.

“You are mar­ket­ing world­wide. You pro­vide a ser­vice; you can mar­ket world­wide. You know, 23 per cent of all re­tail world­wide now is on­line. What have we done about it? We are just ob­servers. We should be par­tic­i­pants and lever­ag­ing that.”

His Cab­i­net col­league, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Do­minic Smith, said he was not pre­pared to dis­cuss what he asked for but as­sured that what­ev­er is al­lo­cat­ed will be used for the ben­e­fit of the coun­try. Smith said there has been no con­fir­ma­tion, as yet, on chang­ing the name of his min­istry af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter adopt­ed the Unit­ed States’ re­brand­ing of the term ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to “su­per in­tel­li­gence.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor San­jiv Bood­hu said the Bud­get will be “more of noth­ing.”

“What I ex­pect from the Bud­get? More of noth­ing. I don’t ex­pect there to be any­thing that is changed. The Gov­ern­ment hasn’t changed its pat­tern of be­hav­iour, the way that they gov­ern. They have not in­tro­duced any fis­cal mea­sures, any eco­nom­ic stim­uli. Any­thing at all that tells the pop­u­la­tion that we should ex­pect any­thing nice in the Bud­get. Notwith­stand­ing what they have la­belled it to be. I can’t think of one thing that tells me that we ex­pect any­thing bet­ter from the Bud­get.”

Bood­hu added that whether it was 60,000 or 100,000, thou­sands of peo­ple lost their jobs in the last 18 months since the Gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice. He said be­cause of that, no one should ex­pect any­thing “nice” in the Bud­get.