In ad­dress­ing the per­for­mance of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my last Fri­day, the fi­nance min­is­ter sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic that the econ­o­my was re­silient and had per­formed bet­ter than com­men­ta­tors had ex­pect­ed. The im­proved eco­nom­ic per­for­mance was due en­tire­ly to im­proved en­er­gy prices and for­tu­itous de­vel­op­ments that have worked to the coun­try’s ad­van­tage. Since bud­get day is three weeks away, it can be as­sumed that the re­al pur­pose of Fri­day’s ex­er­cise was to man­age pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions by speak­ing to the coun­try di­rect­ly and pre­sent­ing more da­ta than could be ex­pect­ed in the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

By high­light­ing the fi­nan­cial im­pact of the union de­mands in the cur­rent round of ne­go­ti­a­tions, the fi­nance min­is­ter was sound­ing a note of cau­tion and sig­nalling the lim­its of the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to ab­sorb these de­mands. The chal­lenges are great. The in­ter­na­tion­al out­look is one of con­tin­ued volatil­i­ty, in­fla­tion, and the phys­i­cal chal­lenges of cli­mate change. The re­al chal­lenge of mak­ing the coun­try and its cit­i­zens more re­silient in the face of con­tin­u­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ad­just­ment is an on­go­ing work in progress.

The chal­lenges are not all eco­nom­ic. Even if in­ter­na­tion­al prices have giv­en the na­tion a respite, it was im­me­di­ate­ly clear that cer­tain el­e­ments of civ­il so­ci­ety would not co­op­er­ate with the script. The re­spons­es were im­me­di­ate if not pre­planned.

With the mem­o­ry of its sup­port­ers’ ef­forts to dis­rupt high­way traf­fic and cause civ­il com­mo­tion fresh in our minds, the Scrap Iron Deal­ers mo­tor­cade demon­strat­ed that it would not back down from its chal­lenge to the State. Not to be out­done, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Teach­ers Union (TTUTA) will be boy­cotting the open­ing day of school as teach­ers 'rest and re­flect' af­ter two years of re­mote learn­ing which have neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed our na­tion’s youth. OW­TU’s An­cel Ro­get warned the coun­try to ex­pect some­thing big. Oth­er union lead­ers have al­ready sig­nalled that all is not well. The crime sit­u­a­tion re­mains un­changed, as ev­i­denced by the shootout at the Brix Ho­tel car park.

Keep­ing the ship of state steady will re­quire calm heads and cool tongues to avoid adding fu­el to an al­ready com­bustible mix. The de­mands of the var­i­ous claimants can­not all be sat­is­fied by the ex­tra rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by high­er en­er­gy prices. It is in ef­fect noth­ing more than a wind­fall gain. Whilst the war in Ukraine drags on, en­er­gy prices are like­ly to re­main buoy­ant. But the OECD coun­tries are mak­ing con­cert­ed ef­forts to mod­er­ate en­er­gy prices, and the na­tion’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion is still frag­ile. A cau­tious ap­proach is best.

The fi­nance min­is­ter’s pre­sen­ta­tion pro­vid­ed much more in­for­ma­tion on the coun­try’s macro­eco­nom­ic po­si­tion than is cus­tom­ary. But there were gaps. Peo­ple mat­ter, as do re­sults. Has the pover­ty lev­el risen or re­mained the same? What will be done to ad­dress those who are at the low­er end of the eco­nom­ic lad­der?

It is not enough to damp­en ex­pec­ta­tions. More must be done to pro­vide a con­text in which the coun­try can un­der­stand the ex­pen­di­ture pri­or­i­ties and how funds will be dis­trib­uted to those pri­or­i­ties. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion task is to fash­ion an an­swer to the key ques­tion that every cit­i­zen is ask­ing: 'What is in it for me?' It would be good if the bud­get speech ad­dress­es this.