It’s huge­ly per­ilous to sub­mit a bud­get-re­lat­ed news­pa­per col­umn the very evening of the pre­sen­ta­tion of the an­nu­al pack­age of sur­vival mea­sures.

In T&T, though, one thing you can re­ly on is a cu­ri­ous con­tra­dic­tion: a coun­try ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing world-class cre­ative work re­mains fo­cused al­most en­tire­ly on ex­haustible and of­ten un­re­li­able as­sets. The val­ue of these re­sources, more­over, de­pends heav­i­ly on ex­ter­nal fac­tors be­yond our con­trol.

Such irony is not unique to any sin­gle po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion. The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce ad­dress­es the gap un­der its “Or­ange Econ­o­my” ban­ner.

Mean­while, gen­er­a­tions of world-class mu­si­cians, mas de­sign­ers, vi­su­al artists, dancers, drama­tists, writ­ers, and film­mak­ers con­tin­ue to be treat­ed as though their prin­ci­pal val­ue lies sole­ly on tourist en­ter­tain­ment, “cul­tur­al preser­va­tion,” keep­ing young peo­ple out of trou­ble, or oc­ca­sion­al in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim.

The clichéd tru­ism of “cul­ture as a uni­fy­ing force that de­fines our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty” is in­suf­fi­cient to ac­knowl­edge eco­nom­ic val­ue. It’s like how the need to “har­ness” po­ten­tial, with­out spe­cif­ic eval­u­a­tion of what can be use­ful to achieve this, can ring hol­low with­out men­tion of tan­gi­ble fund­ing and per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors.

The prob­lem has nev­er been a short­age of tal­ent, uni­fy­ing po­ten­tial, en­ter­prise, or pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. We are look­ing at this dur­ing a week in which fi­nal trib­utes are be­ing paid to the late, great Mighty Spar­row.

All of this is oc­cur­ring in the mid­dle of an ar­guably un­prece­dent­ed ex­plo­sion of cre­ative ex­pres­sion in this coun­try. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly so among the “lost gen­er­a­tion,” who are be­ing open­ly tar­get­ed for “buss tail” pun­ish­ment and age dis­crim­i­na­tion – as op­posed to pro­tec­tion - through law and of­fi­cial pol­i­cy.

The prob­lem may well be that those re­spon­si­ble for tai­lor­ing the ba­sic frame­works for de­vel­op­ment of eco­nom­ic op­tions are un­aware of what is ac­tu­al­ly tran­spir­ing. I strong­ly sus­pect so.

I roam the cre­ative space quite a lot and even par­tic­i­pate. But I don’t reg­u­lar­ly see the de­ci­sion­mak­ers where I go.

The peo­ple who craft­ed the min­is­ter’s speech – both in its eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal di­men­sions – need to prove that they have been around to wit­ness what is hap­pen­ing. If not, there can be no claim of en­light­ened eval­u­a­tion.

Next week­end al­so marks the launch of Panora­ma 2027. That’s a whole dif­fer­ent sto­ry. This space has been over­ly em­ployed to stress the la­tent eco­nom­ic val­ue of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment – not on­ly as a source of mu­sic, but as a re­new­able re­source in­volv­ing grow­ing num­bers of young and old peo­ple – in­clud­ing the “lost gen­er­a­tion.”

So, this week, I am not go­ing too far down that road, ex­cept to say that pro­gres­sive state re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for grow­ing cre­ative in­dus­tries can nev­er be con­sid­ered to be mere acts of “char­i­ty.” Es­pe­cial­ly by peo­ple who are nev­er around to wit­ness what is hap­pen­ing in that sec­tor alone.

Men­tion of skills-de­vel­op­ment for a cul­tur­al­ly im­por­tant in­dus­try such as the steel­pan is im­por­tant. How­ev­er, the scope of what was iden­ti­fied on Mon­day does not cap­ture the broad­er steel­pan ecosys­tem of per­for­mance, com­po­si­tion, ar­rang­ing, in­stru­ment de­sign, fes­ti­vals, record­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al pro­mo­tion.

With di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion be­ing an en­dur­ing, re­cur­ring na­tion­al as­pi­ra­tion, the ques­tion is whether the cre­ative sec­tor will be treat­ed as a col­lec­tion of de­serv­ing cul­tur­al in­ter­ests or as an in­ter­con­nect­ed eco­nom­ic sys­tem ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment, ex­ports, in­vest­ment and in­no­va­tion.

There is some ev­i­dence that the op­por­tu­ni­ty is sub­stan­tial. A Jan­u­ary 2023 CDB study—The Con­tri­bu­tion of Copy­right-Based In­dus­tries to the Econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go—es­ti­mat­ed that the cre­ative in­dus­tries ac­count­ed for 5.5 per cent of GDP in 2016.

This was equiv­a­lent to ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$8.3 bil­lion in val­ue added. This marked an in­crease in es­ti­mat­ed con­tri­bu­tion from 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2011. The study al­so es­ti­mat­ed that copy­right-based in­dus­tries ac­count­ed for 20,113 jobs in 2016 and gen­er­at­ed a pos­i­tive over­all trade bal­ance of TT$113 mil­lion.

These are his­tor­i­cal es­ti­mates cov­er­ing a broad range of “copy­right-based” in­dus­tries, not a cur­rent val­u­a­tion of the en­tire cre­ative econ­o­my. So, don’t take this away as un­ques­tion­ing fact. The fig­ures, how­ev­er, pro­vide ev­i­dence of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty that de­serves far clos­er at­ten­tion.

The re­port’s sig­nif­i­cance ex­tends be­yond its num­bers. It iden­ti­fies the po­ten­tial for in­vest­ment in copy­right-based pro­duc­tion to strength­en pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, ex­pand for­eign cur­ren­cy in­flows and help di­ver­si­fy a near mono­cul­tur­al econ­o­my.

Its rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments, in­cen­tives, im­proved copy­right en­force­ment, in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing and in­vest­ment in skills.

These are not sim­ply “cul­tur­al pol­i­cy” con­cerns. They are eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment re­quire­ments. Even if we ac­knowl­edge gaps in the 2023 analy­sis, where are these broad sen­ti­ments in Bud­get 2027? When have they ever been there?