On the eve of Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions, the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers' Union (BIG­WU) is de­scrib­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's con­tention that the gov­ern­ment can­not af­ford to pay more than five per cent to work­ers in the pub­lic sec­tor as un­ten­able. BIG­WU Pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era claims the Min­is­ter had in­tro­duced a wage re­straint pol­i­cy by virtue of the five per cent cap be­ing ap­plied to wage and salary ne­go­ti­a­tions in the pub­lic sec­tor. "Be­cause the State em­ploys the largest pro­por­tion of em­ploy­ees in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ne­go­ti­a­tions in the pri­vate sec­tor are af­fect­ed neg­a­tive­ly," he said, adding that in­tro­duc­tion of a wage re­straint pol­i­cy is un­fair in the con­text of the ab­sence of a Na­tion­al In­comes Pol­i­cy.

Cabr­era not­ed that the af­ter tax prof­it record­ed by Re­pub­lic Bank in­creased from $1.038 bil­lion in 2009 to $1.074 bil­lion last year. In the case of First Cit­i­zens, prof­it in­creased by $74 mil­lion dur­ing that same pe­ri­od, he said. The trade union­ist con­tend­ed: "The first state­ment made by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter on his as­sump­tion of of­fice was that "the trea­sury was emp­ty". "The truth of the mat­ter is that the state of the econ­o­my was not as bad as paint­ed by Mr Dook­er­an. The ex­pen­di­ture an­nounced in the Na­tion­al Bud­get for 2011 was $49 bil­lion (big­ger than in any oth­er year). He has re­cent­ly re­turned to the Par­lia­ment to ask for more mon­ey by way of bud­getary ex­pen­di­ture. "By the end of the first quar­ter of 2010, the econ­o­my had al­ready come out of neg­a­tive growth; the econ­o­my en­joyed its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive quar­ter of eco­nom­ic growth.

The Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed that the econ­o­my had ex­pand­ed by 2.3 per cent by the end of the first quar­ter of 2010. GDP grew by 4.5 per cent for 2010. Stan­dards and Poors gave the coun­try a cred­it rat­ing of A at the end of 2010. Cabr­era said while Dook­er­an has point­ed to the ex­is­tence of a deficit, the ac­tu­al deficit for last year stood at 0.22 per cent of GDP, which he de­scribed as "an ex­treme­ly favourable deficit."

He not­ed: "Deficit fi­nanc­ing is com­mon in Eu­rope and the USA, where al­though Pres­i­dent Oba­ma cam­paigned against the large Amer­i­can deficit, un­der his Pres­i­den­cy the deficit has been in­creased even fur­ther. "The 2011 Bud­get was based on an oil price of US$65 per bar­rel and a nat­ur­al gas price of US$2.75 per mmb­tu. The oil price is present­ly US$111.05 per bar­rel and the price of nat­ur­al gas is US$4.73 per mmb­tu. This means that gov­ern­ment's rev­enue as per for­eign ex­change earn­ings from oil and gas in­creased by at least 25 per cent."

Ac­cord­ing to Cabr­era, for the pe­ri­od 2006 to 2011 Gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture grew from $37.7 bil­lion to $48.9 bil­lion. How­ev­er, dur­ing 2007 to 2010, the per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture on salaries and wages fell from 20.7 per cent to 17.9 per cent. "Over the pe­ri­od 2001 to 2010, the share of pub­lic ser­vice wages and salaries as part of gov­ern­ment's cur­rent rev­enue de­clined from 30.6 per cent to 15.6 per cent," he said. "Over that same pe­ri­od, the share of pub­lic ser­vants' salaries and wages in re­la­tion to GDP al­so de­clined from 7.4 per cent to 5.2 per cent. "The Na­tion­al Bud­get for 2011, saw an in­crease in gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture of 12.5 per cent. How­ev­er, ex­pen­di­ture on gov­ern­ment's salaries and wages was a pal­try two per cent." Cabr­era said these ar­gu­ments are "com­pelling enough" to mo­ti­vate work­ers to take a stand against the five per cent cap. To add in­sult to the in­jury, he added, the pri­vate sec­tor owes the gov­ern­ment $13 bil­lion in un­paid tax­es.