JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

BUDGET 2021–The Carnival is Over

by

Helen Drayton
1734 days ago
20201010
HELEN DRAYTON

HELEN DRAYTON

What the Bud­get says is that based on a pop­u­la­tion of about 1, 365,000 cit­i­zens, for each one of us, the Gov­ern­ment es­ti­mat­ed in­come will be $30,300 and ex­pen­di­ture $36,315 per head. It will spend $6,015 more per per­son than it would earn. Sur­pris­ing­ly, it is cush­ion­ing our lives pre­cise­ly as it had done dur­ing times when oil and gas rev­enues flood­ed its cof­fers al­though, by the force of cir­cum­stance, the re­al Car­ni­val is over. We must now pay mar­ket prices for gas, and eat nu­tri­tious lo­cal fruits if we can’t af­ford the for­eign ones. In a short time, we’ll have to pay more for elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter so start get­ting used to sav­ing en­er­gy and the pre­cious liq­uid.

For many cit­i­zens, there’s still free: trans­porta­tion, health care, low-cost hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, and trans­porta­tion. And the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to be the bene­fac­tor to the most vul­ner­a­ble amongst us for near­ly all their needs. Added to that, it has re­duced in­come tax by $250 month­ly for every work­ing adult earn­ing over $7,000 month­ly. Be­low that in­come, work­ers pay none. That ex­tra cash could buy a lot of flour and rice for the av­er­age fam­i­ly.

The Gov­ern­ment has been very gen­er­ous even though it stands be­tween a rock and a hard place, with dwin­dling rev­enues and main­tain­ing an ef­fi­cient so­cial safe­ty net.

Over the years, po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy drove a cul­ture of de­pen­den­cy. So­cial wel­fare is, per­haps, the most sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er to self-suf­fi­cien­cy when not ad­e­quate­ly tar­get­ed and im­ple­ment­ed and there­fore pro­motes so­cial in­equity. The time when sub­si­dies and free­ness sans a vi­able eco­nom­ic mod­el to sup­port such costs is up­on us. The Gov­ern­ment had done well in sta­bil­is­ing the econ­o­my over the past five years af­ter the dis­as­trous de­cline in en­er­gy prices from 2015 there­abouts, cou­pled with trea­sury raids. No one could have an­tic­i­pat­ed a flu pan­dem­ic.

While we could nev­er set aside the grief of so many deaths, COVID may yet prove to be a bless­ing in dis­guise. It’s forc­ing us to buck­le up and open our eyes to op­por­tu­ni­ties as it tum­bles economies that were head­ing for crash­es any­way, and it shows up in­equities. That’s true in ed­u­ca­tion, as ac­cess to learn­ing is de­pen­dent on ac­cess to Wi-Fi and com­put­ers, which thou­sands of par­ents can’t af­ford. Ed­u­ca­tion is a Gov­ern­ment oblig­a­tion, and the plan to en­sure all chil­dren can ben­e­fit from on­line learn­ing is a nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tion. Para­phras­ing the Fa­ther of Our Na­tion: “The fu­ture of the na­tion is in chil­dren’s lap­top bags.”

The Gov­ern­ment is on the right track by di­vest­ing it­self of ven­tures that are best served by pri­vate cap­i­tal. It had cre­at­ed sev­er­al state en­ter­pris­es to es­cape the pub­lic ser­vice bu­reau­cra­cy among oth­er rea­sons. Still, many turned out to be ex­ten­sions of the bu­reau­crat­ic sys­tem. Pub­lic sec­tor ef­fi­cien­cy is crit­i­cal to fu­ture pros­per­i­ty. Will the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty and the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute fall in the same cul­tur­al traps? The ben­e­fits of e-gov­ern­ment with­out changes in cul­ture and struc­ture won’t be achieved.

It is ap­pre­ci­at­ed that the Gov­ern­ment can’t bring about a trans­for­ma­tion of the sec­tor with­out con­sti­tu­tion­al change. That re­quires the co­op­er­a­tion of all arms of gov­er­nance—the State. If there’s a time for ma­tu­ri­ty, com­mon-sense and hard de­ci­sions about non-per­form­ing In­sti­tu­tions it’s now. Crime, in­clud­ing pub­lic cor­rup­tion, re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant risk to so­cial and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. The con­sti­tu­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion must be ad­dressed if we are to deal ef­fi­cient­ly with cor­rup­tion. It’s time to stop hid­ing be­hind the fa­cade of hu­man re­source gaps, but there is a man­pow­er prob­lem atop a choked pipeline that should be dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly oth­er­wise the chances of suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of cor­rup­tion are slim.

The mo­ment calls for “na­tive in­ge­nu­ity,” imag­i­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion across the spec­trum. It places agri­cul­ture at the cen­tre of the food sup­ply chain, and the na­tion’s health. That’s in­spir­ing. The mea­sures for pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in build­ing low-cost hous­ing, di­vest­ment of the Port, e-Gov­ern­ment, and oth­er ini­tia­tives au­gur well for pri­vate in­vest­ments, free­ing up frozen liq­uid­i­ty, and even­tu­al­ly cre­at­ing sus­tain­able jobs.

Striv­ing to­ward new pros­per­i­ty is a vein run­ning through the Bud­get, which tries to bal­ance the harsh eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties with so­cial needs. Yup, the Car­ni­val is over.

columnist


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored