Gail Alexan­der

Small­er. Tighter. More work-ori­ent­ed. With lit­tle room for wastage. That de­scrip­tion ac­tu­al­ly ap­plies to the new par­lia­men­tary cham­ber at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, which the me­dia vis­it­ed on Wednes­day. But some are won­der­ing if it may al­so be ap­plic­a­ble to the 2012 bud­getary pack­age which Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an is "chris­ten­ing" the new cham­ber with on Mon­day af­ter­noon, as its first or­der of busi­ness. Dook­er­an's sec­ond pre­scrip­tion with­in his three-year plan for eco­nom­ic turn­around is ex­pect­ed to be a mid­dle-ground trea­tise, pick­ing up where his 2011 pack­age, "Fac­ing the Is­sues-Turn­ing the Econ­o­my Around," left off.

It will like­ly present a 2012 fo­cus on build­ing growth mo­men­tum, rev­enue mo­bil­i­sa­tion and so­cial co­he­sion, a Fi­nance spokesman said yes­ter­day. How many plus signs-and where-will fig­ure in Dook­er­an's "dou­ble 10" bud­get re­mains to be seen. Bud­get de­liv­ery falls on the 10th of the tenth month, ob­served in Chi­na as the start of the Wuchang Up­ris­ing lead­ing to the col­lapse of the Qing dy­nasty. Dou­ble 10 sym­bols are tra­di­tion­al­ly two linked plus signs, de­not­ing 10 in Chi­nese. Caught be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic down­turn and ris­ing lo­cal de­mands, Dook­er­an's bud­get may be fac­ing the same con­straints as the new par­lia­men­tary lo­ca­tion: tight room to suc­cess­ful­ly ma­noeu­vre de­spite sta­bil­i­ty of base, new con­di­tions and ex­pert in­put.

For both the Par­lia­ment cham­ber and like­ly the 2012 bud­get, ad­just­ment may be nec­es­sary on the part of those af­fect­ed by each of the re­spec­tive sit­u­a­tions af­ter Mon­day. That is, ul­ti­mate­ly, the pub­lic. Though the new cham­ber is small­er than the Red House Par­lia­ment cham­ber, the en­tire Par­lia­ment's new home on eight floors of Wa­ter­front Tow­er D is col­lec­tive­ly larg­er than the Red House's north­ern half, which the en­tire Par­lia­ment's sec­tors used, its cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer, Ja­son El­cock, says. Less cham­ber space for the me­dia-on­ly for 35-is not so much of an is­sue as the fact that the cham­ber may be per­ceived as less peo­ple-friend­ly.

Pub­lic gallery ac­com­mo­da­tion has been cut from the 130 which the Red House's gallery held to 45. Schools of­ten came to the Red House to wit­ness Par­lia­ment pro­ceed­ings and some class­es alone were as much as 30. Al­so, the pub­lic gallery, lo­cat­ed be­hind the Op­po­si­tion row, has a good view of Gov­ern­ment MPs, but lim­it­ed frontal view of the Op­po­si­tion and the sev­en PP MPs sit­ting be­hind the Op­po­si­tion row. How open to pub­lic ex­pres­sion the new lo­ca­tion is al­so re­mains ques­tion­able since space for pub­lic demon­stra­tions-a re­quired part of all de­mor­at­ic Par­lia­ments -is lim­it­ed at the Wa­ter­front, save for ad­join­ing space near the com­plex's foun­tain and busy Wright­son Road.

The Red House's pave­ment and Wood­ford Square op­po­site have al­ways been busy with protests and demon­stra­tions by all types of sec­tors. How­ev­er, demon­stra­tions out­side the Wa­ter­front Par­lia­ment, if any are al­lowed, may im­pact on the im­age of the five-star Hy­att ho­tel next door. The lo­ca­tion may al­so rule out cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ings for the next three years that Par­lia­ment re­sides there, El­cock en­vis­ages. Cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ings fea­ture march past salutes by armed forces in front of the Pres­i­dent, which were usu­al­ly done on Aber­crom­by Street, out­side the Red House.

The Wa­ter­front has lit­tle space for this save Wright­son Road in front the Par­lia­ment, or on the seafront park­way be­hind Tow­er D. Lim­it­ed space in the cham­ber, a stan­dard util­i­tar­i­an room, has how­ev­er brought Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion rows clos­er. El­cock said UK Par­lia­ment stan­dards al­low "two swords lengths" of space be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion row. In the ex­ist­ing "cut­lass length" or two now be­tween the PP and PNM sides in the Wa­ter­front cham­ber, it re­mains to be seen whether the new close­ness will fu­el more favourable re­sults or on­ly fire.

'2011 bud­get aim achieved' -TTMA, Cham­ber

It's time­ly that in start­ing off the new Par­lia­ment set­ting, the 15-month-old Gov­ern­ment will ac­count for per­for­mance to date in its re­port on the econ­o­my in the up­com­ing bud­get and via its path for 2012. What­ev­er left out or "spun" will be clar­i­fied via Op­po­si­tion scru-tiny in the bud­get de­bate. Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewa-rie, han­dling de­vel­op­ment plan­ning for bud­get 2012, be­lieves the 2011 pack­age at­tained its aim of ini­ti­at­ing growth. "Gov­ern­ment had to con­tend with left­over PNM bur­dens of three years of retroac­tive union claims, Cli­co and over­bud­get­ed con­trac­tors' debts, plus sta­bilise T&T," Tewarie said.

"The eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion was mi­nus 3.5 per cent de­cline in 2009. So to have moved from that to con­sol­i­date growth, the pack­age would have achieved its main ob­jec­tive of sta­bil­i­sa­tion." In the flow, how­ev­er, sev­er­al 2011 plans have been non-start-ers, or slow. For ex­am­ple, Tourism Min­is­ter Ru­pert Grif­fith on Thurs­day up­dat­ed progress on the 2011 plan for a sug­ar mu­se­um at Sevil­la, Ca­roni, of which lit­tle had been heard. The pri­vate sec­tor al­ready has its own per­spec­tive on PP's 2011 bud­get per­for­mance. T&T Cham­ber's Kather­ine Ku­mar said some ar­eas of the 2011 pack­age have worked and some have not be­come air­borne.

"An­ti-crime, a pri­or­i­ty area for at­ten­tion, is a work in progress and is hap­pen­ing. Some ini­tia­tives to pro­pel busi­ness are hap­pen­ing, but some, not fast enough. Wheels are turn­ing. Mr Dook­er­an has said he has a three-year plan, but we're al­ways anx­ious for it to turn faster." "If the up­com­ing bud­get de­liv­ers on the ex­pect­ed theme-build­ing growth mo­men­tum, rev­enue mo­bil­i­sa­tion and so­cial co­he­sion-the wheels will move faster. We're op­ti­mistic the one and a half per cent growth for 2011 will be achieved, but we don't know yet. The ul­ti­mate goal is for T&T to re­turn to a growth path." One of the rea­sons T&T has not yet gone that route is be­cause the pri­vate sec­tor is not in­vest­ing, Ku­mar ad­mit­ted, say­ing there are rea­sons in­clud­ing lack of con­fi­dence, which was why some bud-get in­cen­tives for busi­ness were not utilised.

Key rea­sons in­clud­ed the crime sit­u­a­tion, she said. The Cham­ber how­ev­er is hap­py with ini­tia­tives on this and is see­ing strides be­ing made. Ku­mar said T&T and the pri­vate sec­tor is tak­ing a short-term "hit" from the state of emer­gency (SoE). "But we're tak­ing the short-term loss in the in­ter­est of long-term gain if crime is re­duced," she added. "We're con­cerned the an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion is fail­ing, but not sur­prised. Ev­i­dence must be en­sured. How­ev­er, some of the 3,000 per­sons held are on oth­er charges. We've seen the SoE yield re­sults on the fu­el bunker­ing rack­et, drugs are be­ing re­moved from the street. So a lot is be­ing done." But cur­few ex­ten­sion be­yond the SoE cut­off of De­cem­ber 5 would be ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing for the busi­ness sec­tor, Ku­mar em­pha­sised.

"De­cem­ber is a month of big sales, late shop­ping, Christ­mas par­ties-we won't like to do this (SoE) be­yond De­cem­ber. Car­ni­val al­so is a busy high-ex­pen­di­ture time." Adding to busi­ness in­vest­ment dis­in­cen­tive is the lack of ease to do so, in­clud­ing a one-stop shop to ex­pe­dite this. Al­so, Ku­mar said, the bur­den of de­vel­op­ment spend­ing could be bet­ter shared with more pub­lic-pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships. Lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers al­so made the in­vest­ment-neg­a­tive cli­mate blunt­ly clear in a re­cent meet­ing with Gov­ern­ment. TTMA's Richard Lewis said, "Lack of in­vest­ment is one of con­fi­dence. But the sit­u­a­tion is not T&T's fault-in­vest­ment glob­al­ly is af­fect­ed.

"The 2011 bud­get stopped T&T's slide with its safe­guards. If it was meant to stop haem­or­rhag­ing of bad spend­ing, it has worked and been suc­cess­ful to a point. Now it's a ques­tion of growth-how to cure the pa­tient and re­turn it to nor­mal­cy." Lewis added, "We now have to hoist the 2011 bud­get's build­ing blocks and Gov­ern­ment needs to start point­ing us where we need to go-start spend­ing the mon­ey with val­ue in the right places to re­gain in­vest­ment con­fi­dence." De­spite $8 bil­lion (PSIP) de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for 2012, all min­istries are re­ceiv­ing al­lo­ca­tion cuts. Agri­cul­ture, for in­stance, which is re­ceiv­ing $500 mil­lion, will be spend­ing $300 mil­lion of that on ser­vic­ing EM­BD debts, it was con­firmed.

Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, who'd hoped for "plen­ty, plen­ty" fund­ing for pro­grammes, has ve­toed even the idea of a pedes­tri­an walkover for the Par­lia­ment's Wa­ter­front lo­ca­tion-cit­ing cost. Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj al­so said Gov­ern­ment's cur­rent pri­or­i­ties did not in­clude the Cou­va air­port, which Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last week hint­ed was in the bud­get. Bud­get de­bate will al­so like­ly segue-via Op­po­si­tion con­tri­bu­tion-in­to state of emer­gency dis­cus­sion in­clud­ing reper­cus­sions on 2012 rev­enue, costs to busi­ness and the State from po­lice over­time as well as po­ten­tial ac­tion by those freed. With the fail­ure of the an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion-con­firmed by Gov­ern­ment state­ment that it will be re­viewed-the PP's bid to blame it on the Op­po­si­tion will hard­ly stand.

Gov­ern­ment boasts six at­tor­neys in the Low­er House alone, not the least of which are its two main pil­lars: the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. This ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­so leaned to­wards ex­ter­nal le­gal as­sis­tance in mat­ters, all of which was avail­able in ad­di­tion to in-house ex­per­tise. Fol­low­ing Mon­day's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, de­bate can con­tin­ue in 48 hours. Gov­ern­ment ex­pects Op­po­si­tion re­ply from next Thurs­day or Fri­day, pos­si­bly con­tin­u­ing in­to the week­end. Sen­ate de­bate is ex­pect­ed from the week of Oc­to­ber 18, Gov­ern­ment pro-jects.