The 2024 Bud­get speech con­tained many para­dox­i­cal state­ments. A para­dox is a state­ment that is seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry or op­posed to com­mon sense but might be true. For ex­am­ple, the speech boast­ed that the elec­tric­i­ty rates in T&T were amongst the low­est in the world. Yet sub­sidised elec­tric­i­ty tar­iffs can­not con­tin­ue at these rates as ev­i­denced by the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion last week.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the speech not­ed that the un­em­ploy­ment lev­el had de­clined to its “low­est ever” at 3.7 per cent and the labour par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in­creased, mean­ing more peo­ple were em­ployed. Yet hun­dreds of peo­ple showed up at the job fair in San Fer­nan­do on Fri­day last seek­ing jobs in Guyana’s en­er­gy and con­struc­tion sec­tors. In June, thou­sands turned out to ap­ply for Roy­al Caribbean’s Sea­far­ers re­cruit­ment pro­gramme. In Ju­ly thou­sands of hope­ful ap­pli­cants braved in­clement weath­er to gain em­ploy­ment in the na­tion's pris­ons. What caused such over­whelm­ing re­spons­es to these re­cruit­ment ini­tia­tives if the coun­try was close to full em­ploy­ment?

The pro­ject­ed re­sult of the 2024 Bud­get ex­er­cise and for the next three to five years are con­tin­u­ous deficits. Deficits stim­u­late the econ­o­my but in­crease for­eign ex­change us­age and gov­ern­ment debt as deficits must be fi­nanced. Keep­ing the deficit with­in in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed lim­its may ap­pear pru­dent but does not al­ter the fact that run­ning per­sis­tent deficits in­creas­es gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing per­sis­tent­ly, which is un­sus­tain­able. T&T’s cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing out­look is sta­ble, but its cred­it rat­ing is the last rung on the in­vest­ment grade lad­der. There is lit­tle room for ma­noeu­vre

The con­tin­ued de­pen­dence on nat­ur­al gas as an eco­nom­ic dri­ver al­so rais­es oth­er is­sues re­gard­ing its for­eign ex­change gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty giv­en the coun­try’s falling nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion. The for­eign ex­change re­serves may be ad­e­quate to­day, but what mat­ters is en­sur­ing that the nec­es­sary de­ci­sions are tak­en to re­duce the pe­ri­od­ic scarci­ties that oc­cur. If the first gas from Lo­ran-Man­a­tee does not oc­cur un­til 2028, then there is a tremen­dous amount of work nec­es­sary to main­tain pro­duc­tion at the cur­rent lev­els. There is lit­tle ev­i­dence of the vol­ume of drilling ac­tiv­i­ty nec­es­sary to fill the pro­duc­tion gap. The im­pact of in­fla­tion will en­sure that im­port ex­pen­di­ture does not de­cline. What will re­duce the vol­ume of im­ports?

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter has said sev­er­al times in re­cent months that he was un­com­fort­able with WASA's de­pen­dence on de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter for do­mes­tic use be­cause of its high­er cost to WASA. He has al­so sig­nalled that the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy would be to wean WASA of de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter by 2028. Whilst 2028 is four years away, one would pre­sume that there would be short-term arrange­ments to com­pen­sate for De­sal­cott’s planned main­te­nance shut­downs as and when they oc­cur. The cur­rent ev­i­dence from a broad swathe of cus­tomers is that WASA can­not pro­vide a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply even with de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter, far less with­out. Drilling new wells clos­er to cus­tomers is a par­tial so­lu­tion and re­quires im­prov­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. How can this be done with­out al­so in­creas­ing wa­ter rates?

The fore­go­ing points to the need for co­or­di­nat­ed and de­ter­mined ac­tion on many fronts and that thoughts, words, and deeds need to be aligned if pub­lic con­fi­dence is to be main­tained. With­out pub­lic co­op­er­a­tion, this path could be­come very del­i­cate.