Gail Alexan­der

The tra­di­tion­al dol­drums en­vi­ron­ment of the par­lia­men­tary break has proven a par­tic­u­lar­ly busy time for both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion where shoring up of sup­port on var­i­ous fronts is con­cerned. Prep­ping for the 2010 bud­get amid chal­leng­ing fi­nan­cial times, the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion has seized a chance to firm up re­la­tions with one group that has been at the heart of deep is­sues and will fig­ure promi­nent­ly ahead al­so–lo­cal con­trac­tors. For the Op­po­si­tion, rather more fences ap­pear to be in con­struc­tion stage where the cen­tral Trinidad-based bat­tle be­tween UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day and es­tranged deputy Jack Warn­er is con­cerned.

The sec­ond bud­get helmed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira takes Gov­ern­ment in­to mid-term and like­ly through a lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion with an Op­po­si­tion split and stale­mat­ed on over­all uni­ty ef­forts.

Af­ter lunch­ing with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough, UNC's Warn­er last night re­paid Pan­day's re­cent in­cur­sion in­to the bor­ough–and var­i­ous ac­tions and al­le­ga­tions–by blast­ing Pan­day from the lat­ter's own Cou­va North seat. Warn­er sav­aged Pan­day, hit­ting "home"–fig­u­ra­tive­ly–re­lat­ing to ex­pens­es he al­leged­ly bore for Pan­day and fam­i­ly, and bat­ter­ing home his case for change in the UNC by bear­ing down on the UNC leader on home turf. Round­ing off the as­sault theme, Warn­er, reach­ing in­to Pan­day's for­mer cir­cle, was al­so sched­uled to present, among speak­ers, one of Pan­day's for­mer tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees and a for­mer Op­po­si­tion of­fice aide who quit last week and has joined Warn­er's team.

With Warn­er now be­fore UNC's dis­ci­pli­nary team, se­nior mem­bers with­in both fac­tions yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted the blood­let­ting will wors­en be­fore the sit­u­a­tion sta­bilis­es. A fact al­so ac­knowl­edged by the COP which–while UNC bat­tles–is car­ries on plan­ning for the next year with a strate­gic ses­sion at Gran Cou­va to­day. While Gov­ern­ment may de­rive com­fort from the Op­po­si­tion's dis­com­fort, its own chal­lenges loom re­gard­ing for­mu­la­tion of the 2010 bud­get, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing Tues­day's state­ments by Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Ewart Williams.

'Stay­ing the course' bud­get

Tesheira's bud­get, ex­pect­ed on a theme of hold­ing the cur­rent course, will be Gov­ern­ment's next head-on swing at po­si­tion­ing T&T to cope with the con­tin­u­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn. The bud­get is ex­pect­ed in mid-Sep­tem­ber fol­low­ing PNM's pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion tour and con­sul­ta- tions with var­i­ous groups, Gov­ern­ment con­firmed yes­ter­day. In prepa­ra­tion for an­oth­er deficit, PNM MPs have stat­ed go­ing to their con­stituen­cies–as Tesheira did Thurs­day with hers–to ac­quaint mem­bers with what lies ahead and ob­tain feed­back. Tesheira's up­com­ing bud­get spot­light will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­coup af­ter her 2009 bud­get over­reached as a re­sult of op­ti­misti­cal­ly pegged oil prices.

This re­sult­ed in a $6 bil­lion rev­enue short­fall, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning con­firmed in (belt-)tight­en­ing Tesheira's 2009 pack­age two months af­ter her pre­sen­ta­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, Gov­er­nor Williams' state­ments have set the stage for a Bud­get which Williams –and Trade Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne–have con­ced­ed will be "dif­fi­cult" to con­fig­ure. This, giv­en pro­ject­ed low en­er­gy rev­enues and re­sul­tant con­straints on start of new projects and com­ple­tion of old ones. De­liv­ered as the Gov­ern­ment fi­nalis­es the bud­get–and two weeks af­ter Man­ning's belt-loos­en­ing de­c­la­ra­tion–Williams' in­for­ma­tion could not have been news to the Gov­ern­ment since the Cen­tral Bank has in­put in bud­get plan­ning (as he ex­plained).

While Williams ob­vi­ous­ly in­tend­ed to defuse re­ces­sion pan­ic, his rev­e­la­tions clear­ly warned where T&T may be head­ed un­less a cer­tain path is fol­lowed.

And if re­ces­sion can­not cur­rent­ly be con­firmed fol­low­ing re­cent neg­a­tive quar­ter­ly re­sults, then Gov­ern­ment's bud­get will have to be so con­fig­ured as to en­sure that its 2010 pack­age does not re­sult in such a con­fir­ma­tion in com­ing months, and can in fact piv­ot T&T well away from such a des­ti­na­tion. How­ev­er it is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that some of Williams' pre­vi­ous cau­tion­ary ad­vice to Gov­ern­ment–in­clud­ing on cur­tail­ing projects–has been met with "full-speed-ahead" re­but­tal. If Williams' pro­jec­tion of a de­cline in re­al Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct for 2009 is on tar­get, as the first an­nu­al de­cline in re­al GDP since 1993, it will un­der­score the need for Gov­ern­ment's sharpest bud­get for­mu­la­tion skills. If it ma­te­ri­alis­es it may be some­thing at least one per­son on the Gov­ern­ment team is fa­mil­iar with since Man­ning's first ad­min­is­tra­tion (1991-1995) was in force in 1993 with Wen­dell Mot­t­ley helm­ing Fi­nance.

As for 2010, Tesheira on Thurs­day con­firmed gov­ern­ment bor­row­ings would fig­ure in the up­com­ing bud­get, as re­port­ed in last week's col­umn. How much bor­row­ing the Gov­ern­ment will en­gage in on the lo­cal sec­tor (for small projects) and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly (for larg­er ones) re­mains to un­fold. Min­is­ter Browne's hint on Thurs­day of "phased ex­pen­di­ture" and tighter as­sess­ment of pri­or­i­ties ap­pear to mesh with some of Williams' ad­vice. It re­mains to be seen how Gov­ern­ment will push the cre­ative en­ve­lope out­side of fis­cal in­cen­tives in pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion if its bud­get is to meet Williams' sug­ges­tions for as­sist­ing pri­vate sec­tor ex­pan­sion and en­sure that short-term dan­gers Williams not­ed–in­creased job­less­ness, in­fla­tion–do not be­come en­trenched. The Gov­ern­ment has al­ready sig­nalled an in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­men­tal path–which Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day and oth­er groups have sug­gest­ed–re­gard­ing 2010 projects that could aid T&T's in­vest­ment thrust Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­cent­ly an­nounced $487 mil­lion worth of air­port im­prove­ments and drainage plans, con­firm­ing the Fi­nance Min­istry had ap­proved fund­ing. Im­bert said it would not have been ap­proved if there was no mon­ey for it. (Im­bert, on va­ca­tion un­til month-end, man­aged to an­nounce the $167 mil­lion drainage plan just be­fore floods be­gan in­creas­ing.)

Con­trac­tors on board now

Tourism Min­is­ter Joseph Ross al­so an­nounced a $233 mil­lion re­struc­tur­ing of Mara­cas Bay via Chi­nese, rather than lo­cal, work­man­ship. Which rais­es an­oth­er is­sue: to what ex­tent will tight­en­ing rev­enues see Gov­ern­ment shift from for­eign re­liance re­gard­ing projects to re-cir­cu­la­tion of fo­cus and funds on lo­cal pro­fes­sion­als via stim­u­lus projects. Ob­vi­ous­ly lo­cal re­liance comes to the fore in the cur­rent sce­nario since Gov­ern­ment's projects will con­tin­ue in a small­er ca­pac­i­ty and con­trac­tors' project work is slow­ing down as mega-projects con­clude. Williams on Tues­day par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ed de­clines in the man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and con­struc­tion sec­tors.

How­ev­er, Williams still warned against de­mand stim­u­lus and "spend­ing the way out of re­ces­sion." (This, no­tably ten days af­ter Man­ning's belt-loos­en­ing edict and Tesheira's hint of a bud­get stim­u­lus plan.) In­deed, Browne on Thurs­day hint­ed of such a plan for the con­struc­tion sec­tor and Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald ac­tu­al­ly an­nounced a $272 mil­lion stim­u­lus plan for small con­trac­tors to build 92 com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres. Seg­ments of the con­struc­tion sec­tor have fa­mous­ly ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of favour­ing for­eign firms over lo­cal, to which the Gov­ern­ment has replied with com­plaints about tar­di­ness and ex­ces­sive costs. The en­tire brouha­ha re­sult­ed in the Uff en­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor and chief state de­vel­op­ment agency Ude­cott's pro­cure­ment prac­tices–the lat­ter be­ing high con­cerns for sacked Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley as well as con­struc­tion lead­ers in the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil, which in­cludes T&T Con­trac­tors' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA).

In Ju­ly when Min­is­ter in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Don­na Cox re­vealed that work per­mits were grant­ed to 12,212 non-Cari­com na­tion­als–in­clud­ing 2,827 Chi­nese–TTCA pres­i­dent Mikey Joseph, say­ing the sit­u­a­tion was "to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able," called for T&T to "see about our own first." Cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions will ob­vi­ous­ly lend to the sit­u­a­tion and a meet­ing of minds may be in the off­ing fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween TTCA's Joseph and PM Man­ning last week Thurs­day. A sub­se­quent meet­ing was held be­tween TTCA, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and Works Min­is­ter Im­bert last week Fri­day. Joseph con­firmed the meet­ings on Mon­day as did TTMA's Greig Laugh­lin. Joseph said talks with Man­ning fo­cused on out­stand­ing pay­ments due to con­trac­tors–a very size­able sum which Joseph de­clined to quan­ti­fy–and to which Man­ning's re­spons­es were favourable.

"We have some in­di­ca­tion that things we dis­cussed will hap­pen. The Prime Min­is­ter is al­so ful­ly aware of the need to stim­u­late the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor and he stat­ed that," Joseph added.

The TTCA and TTMA gave Im­bert a ten-point pro­pos­al re­gard­ing poli­cies, pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures and on sec­tor stim­uli. That doc­u­ment was be­ing fine-tuned by the groups yes­ter­day for sub­mis­sion to the Fi­nance Min­istry's bud­get plan­ning. Con­trac­tors al­so met Gov­ern­ment's Con­struc­tion Over­sight Com­mit­tee head­ed by Dr Lenny Saith on Wednes­day

But JCC unim­pressed...

On whether the re­cent rap­port has im­proved TTCA's hu­mour where Ude­cott is con­cerned, Joseph said Mon­day, "We nev­er had a falling-out with Gov­ern­ment. The sit­u­a­tion was just not in keep­ing with what we thought was good gov­er­nance. Our con­cerns on Ude­cott would be ad­dressed by the en­quiry. We're sat­is­fied with the en­quiry to date there seems to be a mea­sure of good sense work­ing to en­sure this com­mis­sion does its work." Joseph added: "If a fam­i­ly mem­ber is dis­con­tent­ed the fam­i­ly must unite and re­solve it. This change in the eco­nom­ic cli­mate puts the im­pe­tus on us all to look at im­prov­ing how we do things. I want to give the State some cred­it even though it doesn't al­ways fol­low through on plans and we don't al­ways get re­sults we want. But that open door has al­ways been there so we can vent views."

Joseph hopes Gov­ern­ment will in­sti­tute a com­pul­so­ry pol­i­cy re­quir­ing for­eign com­pa­nies to en­gage lo­cal in­put as part of their con­tract. The JCC–to which TTCA is af­fil­i­at­ed–was not part of the meet­ings with Man­ning and Im­bert, JCC head Win­ston Ri­ley con­firmed. Ri­ley is unim­pressed with re­cent­ly an­nounced "stim­u­lus plans" for small con­trac­tors which he said is mi­nus­cule to what is re­al­ly re­quired. Dis­miss­ing Im­bert's $167 mil­lion drainage plan as too small, Ri­ley said Gov­ern­ment needs to think se­ri­ous­ly about a com­pre­hen­sive drainage, trans­port and agri­cul­tur­al plan. "It's not suf­fi­cient to throw mon­ey at the sit­u­a­tion here and there or with small ad hoc projects," Ri­ley added. "T&T is in a state of malaise, there is a lack of in­spi­ra­tion on the fun­da­men­tal is­sues and a com­plete lack of lead­er­ship."

On go­ing

�2 PM meets con­trac­tors as­so­ci­a­tion on $$ owed.

�2 Con­trac­tors, TTMA give Govt pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure pro­pos­als.

�2 ...but JCC out of it.

�2 Will Govt's mid-Sep­tem­ber bud­get heed C/Bank Gov­er­nor's ad­vice?

�2 Jack hits 'home' with Bas.