The cur­rent state of fi­nances and prospects for a vi­able eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy re­main trou­bling is­sues that un­der­mine na­tion­al con­fi­dence. While gov­ern­ments al­ways need mon­ey to help solve prob­lems, mon­ey alone will not solve any of the deep-seat­ed prob­lems in our so­ci­ety. Not crime, not the econ­o­my.

These is­sues are sys­temic and re­quire pol­i­cy shifts and good gov­er­nance with in­fra­struc­ture sup­port.

Any­way, you look at it, the T&T econ­o­my is in dif­fi­cul­ty. Not even the high­er oil and gas prices can help us now be­cause our pro­duc­tion lev­els are down in both oil and gas. High­er oil and gas prices are our best news, but we have lit­tle lever­age. Every­thing else is bad news.

The mon­ey side of things does not look good. We are us­ing up all the mon­ey we have, in HSF and Re­serves, we are pro­duc­ing lit­tle, we are de­pen­dent on im­ports, spend­ing at al­most the same lev­els in the same way, and liv­ing off deficit and debt fi­nanc­ing. We are un­like­ly, with­out a plan for re­cov­ery and growth, to be able to re­pay our debt oblig­a­tions if we con­tin­ue in this way.

What to do? Grow rev­enue and earn more; al­ter spend­ing pat­terns strate­gi­cal­ly; cut ex­pen­di­ture, don't spend more than you earn; cre­ate a cli­mate of con­fi­dence; gen­er­ate re­cov­ery, grow the econ­o­my with pub­lic projects and pri­vate in­vest­ments; im­port less, ex­port more. The crit­i­cal ques­tion is elu­sive, how?

While we were man­ag­ing COVID, such a plan should have been set in mo­tion and by now re­sults should have be­gun to show. What hap­pened to the Road Map to which many na­tion­als gave time and ef­fort?

What not to do? Keep ex­pen­di­ture at the same lev­el; spend mon­ey in the same way fol­low­ing the same pat­tern; de­pend­ing on oil and gas prices for rev­enue; wait for en­er­gy pro­duc­tion to go up; spend with­out re­gard to rev­enue gen­er­at­ed; keep the deficit grow­ing, bor­row with­out a con­cert­ed ac­tion plan for re­cov­ery, growth, for­eign ex­change earn­ings; keep post­pon­ing im­por­tant de­ci­sions; ac­tive­ly pur­chase goods and ser­vices with­out a trans­par­ent, ac­count­able pro­cure­ment regime.

You can't man­age fi­nance, ie, mon­ey and think you are man­ag­ing the econ­o­my.

When you man­age rev­enue, ex­pen­di­ture, deficit, debt to fi­nance ex­pen­di­ture, you are man­ag­ing op­er­a­tions, you are keep­ing things go­ing and main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo, with low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and lit­tle im­prove­ment or de­vel­op­ment and con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing cash flow. There is lit­tle on the pro­duc­tion side or on the stim­u­lus side to make a dif­fer­ence in growth or de­vel­op­ment.

To man­age the econ­o­my you have to man­age pro­duc­tion, trade, in­vest­ment, and de­vel­op­ment. That is to say, what you can pro­duce, what you can make, what you can do and what you can make hap­pen. When you do these things, con­sumer de­mand at home and abroad help your busi­ness­es and your econ­o­my to grow.

In to­day's world, this on­ly hap­pens when you man­age trade, in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment sus­tain­ably. And that means un­der­stand­ing and ap­pre­ci­at­ing that there are tan­gi­ble, in­tan­gi­ble, and prac­ti­cal, prag­mat­ic el­e­ments of de­vel­op­ment. And that the ob­jec­tive is to ex­port more, im­port less, at­tract more in­vest­ment and stim­u­late en­tre­pre­neur­ship, in­no­va­tion and com­pet­i­tive busi­ness­es.

So while mon­ey is al­ways im­por­tant, it is on­ly part of the equa­tion. Clear pol­i­cy choic­es, ef­fec­tive sys­tems, work­ing struc­tures, and good gov­er­nance are es­sen­tial parts of any equa­tion. And these are the cur­rent miss­ing in­gre­di­ents.

More­over, if T&T wants to be less de­pen­dent on en­er­gy, solve the for­eign ex­change cri­sis in the long term, shift to re­new­able en­er­gy and re­new­able in­dus­tries, ex­port more out­side en­er­gy, move up the val­ue chain tech­no­log­i­cal­ly in keep­ing with where the most com­pet­i­tive economies are go­ing, a trans­for­ma­tion agen­da must be rolled out and stake­hold­ers have to be brought in­to the pic­ture.

If you want to man­age the econ­o­my to make re­cov­ery, growth and de­vel­op­ment pos­si­ble then you need to recog­nise that what makes an econ­o­my go are busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ment, labour, NGO s and cit­i­zens as con­sumers as well as groups with self-in­ter­est. All these stake­hold­ers con­tribute to an econ­o­my and de­ter­mine its well-be­ing. And you al­so have to ac­tive­ly build in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships and al­liances.

The Gov­ern­ment seems to be off course on eco­nom­ic man­age­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. They are fo­cused on­ly on the count­ing of mon­ey.