The 2021 bud­get has been read, de­bate on it con­tin­ues, but in the main it has re­ceived good re­views from the pri­vate sec­tor and many mem­bers of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

The T&T Guardian head­line of Oc­to­ber 6 read, “Not so Bad” and it en­cap­su­lat­ed the gen­er­al feel­ing that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert’s bud­get was, all in all, not a bad ef­fort.

You see, Min­is­ter Im­bert was faced with four ba­sic chal­lenges:

He had to present a bud­get in the face of great un­cer­tain­ty caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in which fore­cast­ing is all but im­pos­si­ble.

He was al­so pre­sent­ing a bud­get in which he has dras­ti­cal­ly falling rev­enue from his ma­jor source, the en­er­gy sec­tor, ris­ing debt to GDP and as a re­sult lim­it­ed fis­cal space to op­er­ate in.

He al­so has high lev­els of non dis­cre­tionary spend­ing dom­i­nat­ed by the large size of the pub­lic sec­tor and the un­sus­tain­able lev­els of sub­si­dies and trans­fers.

Im­bert’s bud­get al­so came at a time when the econ­o­my was al­ready frag­ile hav­ing had neg­a­tive GDP growth for the last six years, again on the back of de­clin­ing com­mod­i­ty prices.

The as­sess­ment that the min­is­ter’s bud­get was not so bad I feel is a fair one. He has pro­ject­ed a small re­duc­tion in ex­pen­di­ture with the pro­posed spend­ing lev­els at just over $49 bil­lion. This is at least $2 bil­lion less than the 2020 es­ti­mates.

On the is­sue of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion he has set an op­ti­mistic tar­get of just over $41 bil­lion there­fore pro­ject­ing a deficit of just over $8 bil­lion. This is half of the size of the 2020 deficit, al­though to be fair, the $16 bil­lion deficit in the last fi­nan­cial year was main­ly as a re­sult of the in­creased ex­pen­di­ture as­so­ci­at­ed with the COVID-19 fight and plum­met­ing of rev­enue from the glob­al shut down.

The Min­is­ter’s bud­get has al­so be­gun to ad­dress some of the trans­fers and sub­si­dies but not in a suf­fi­cient­ly sys­tem­at­ic way and he is still try­ing a mea­sured ap­proach to the is­sue.

Im­bert’s bud­get clear­ly points to in­crease tar­iffs for both elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter, two pub­lic util­i­ties that are loos­ing mon­ey on an an­nu­al ba­sis and which gov­ern­ment has to re­duce the trans­fers it gives to them.

We have since learnt that WASA has ini­ti­at­ed the process to seek an in­crease in its tar­iff. He has al­so ful­ly lib­er­alise the fu­els mar­ket, re­mov­ing any risk of gov­ern­ment hav­ing to once again sub­sidise fu­el prices, should glob­al oil prices rise.

But the Min­is­ter has not dealt with re­forms to gov­ern­ment pen­sion in­clu­sive on the need for a con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sion plan for all work­ers, not dis­sim­i­lar to what hap­pens in the US sys­tem.

The coun­try can­not af­ford the con­tin­ued pro­vi­sion of pen­sions to work­ers and peo­ple who nev­er worked in a for­mal job but re­ceived a grant of $3,500 a month.

The NIS sys­tem is in an in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult po­si­tion and has to be ad­dressed and we as a na­tion con­tin­ue to pre­tend that we can drink cham­paign on mau­by mon­ey.

We are set­ting up the peo­ple in their 30s and 40s with this lack of ac­tion on pen­sion re­form and will ask the chil­dren who are en­ter­ing sec­ondary school to­day, to bear a bur­den that they ought not to be tasked with.

Im­bert has iden­ti­fied some of the ma­tri­ces that he sees as un­ac­cept­able and must be ad­dressed to make it eas­i­er to do busi­ness in T&T and, in do­ing so, it is the first step for­ward. He al­so gave a time­line of two years to get it right.

Im­bert al­so promised to pri­va­tise the Port of Port-of-Spain, in­crease pub­lic/pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships in projects.

On the rev­enue side he promised to im­ple­ment on a phased ba­sis the prop­er­ty tax, I hope this is the start of some san­i­ty re­turn­ing to the coun­try and I have al­ready stat­ed that the UNC’s po­si­tion on this is un­sus­tain­able as is their con­tin­ued re­fusal to sup­port the rev­enue au­thor­i­ty.

The vot­ers have spo­ken and yes both the prop­er­ty tax and the rev­enue au­thor­i­ty were cam­paign is­sues. So of­ten the leader of the Op­po­si­tion Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told us Vox Pop­uli, Vox Dei, she must ac­cept that the voice of the peo­ple has been heard and with suit­able amend­ments the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Bill must be passed.

This bud­get was al­so a change in ap­proach and tone for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. Of­ten ac­cused of not be­ing pre­pared to lis­ten to rea­son and of see­ing the pri­vate sec­tor as al­most the en­e­my Im­bert seems to have made some ad­just­ments.

At a post-bud­get event host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Im­bert was asked if he had tak­en a more em­brac­ing ap­proach to the pri­vate sec­tor.

He ad­mit­ted that his stance had changed and ac­knowl­edged that the old ways were not need­ed at this time.

“Yes we just de­cide got try a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. Be­cause this is not an easy sit­u­a­tion we are in at all eh. The pri­vate sec­tor keeps telling us if you give them in­cen­tives there will be in­vest­ment and growth so let us see. I try­ing.” Im­bert told jour­nal­ists.

For cer­tain the Min­is­ter’s tone in pre­sent­ing the bud­get ap­peared to be less stri­dent, even though the gov­ern­ment had less than two months ago been re-elect­ed to pow­er.

It is en­cour­ag­ing that this ap­par­ent cathar­sis has oc­curred in Min­is­ter Im­bert be­cause what is need­ed more than ever in the coun­try is an es­prit de corps.

The coun­try needs all sec­tors to work to­geth­er in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment, pri­vate sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety, labour and of course the op­po­si­tion.

This is a time when our col­lec­tive fu­ture is chal­lenged in a way not seen since in­de­pen­dence, when at­tempts to open back the econ­o­my ful­ly could lead to an in­crease in sick­ness and death and where shut­tered glob­al de­mand has made many of the coun­try’s com­modi­ties at best mar­gin­al­ly prof­itable.

Of­ten it is style and com­mu­ni­ca­tion which this gov­ern­ment lacks and it is hoped that the pur­ga­tion would ex­tend to oth­er MPs and the Par­lia­ment in gen­er­al.

At the end of the day the suc­cess or fail­ure of this bud­get will de­pend heav­i­ly on im­ple­men­ta­tion. It will de­pend on whether the gov­ern­ment and its ap­pa­ra­tus have the ca­pac­i­ty to im­ple­ment the mea­sures.

The call for an im­prove­ment in the ease of do­ing busi­ness will not be eas­i­ly achieved. Pri­vatis­ing the port for ex­am­ple will not solve the is­sue of the tar­di­ness of the cus­toms and ex­cise di­vi­sion. The plan to re­duce the time for ap­proval will not oc­cur with­out the adop­tion of new ways of do­ing things in­clud­ing dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

So the Min­is­ter has made a good start but the proof of the pud­ding is in the eat­ing and un­less as a coun­try we do what has to be done in­clud­ing leg­isla­tive changes we will find our­selves in con­tin­ued trou­ble.

The road ahead is dif­fi­cult and we must all be vig­i­lant, less we fall by the way­side.