Ap­par­ent­ly stung by the Op­po­si­tion's re­lent­less crit­i­cism of the 2025 Bud­get and of the Gov­ern­ment's stew­ard­ship of the do­mes­tic econ­o­my for the last nine years, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, on Tues­day chose to re­spond with an un­bal­anced and over­ly rosy por­trait of Trinidad and To­ba­go in Oc­to­ber 2024.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, Mr Mitchell in­vit­ed Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to trav­el with­in the Caribbean, and to Cana­da, the US or the UK, to "see in those coun­tries what the high cost of liv­ing re­al­ly looks like and feels like...

"When you go out there and you ex­pe­ri­ence the high cost of fu­el, the high cost of util­i­ties, the high cost of trans­porta­tion, and the high cost of ac­com­mo­da­tion, that is when you know how good we have it here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

In com­par­i­son to coun­tries in the re­gion and across the world, it is true that cost of elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter in T&T is low, and the price of fu­el is fixed and pre­dictable, un­like many coun­tries in which it may vary on a month­ly or even dai­ly ba­sis.

Trans­porta­tion costs are close­ly linked to the price of fu­el, which has risen quite sub­stan­tial­ly in the nine years that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has gov­erned T&T. The cost of ac­com­mo­da­tion de­pends large­ly on lo­ca­tion.

The low­er cost of fu­el, util­i­ties and trans­porta­tion in T&T, is due to the mas­sive trans­fer of wealth that res­i­dents have ben­e­fit­ted from for the last two decades.

Guardian Me­dia es­ti­mates in­di­cate that T&T's to­tal ex­pen­di­ture for the ten fis­cal years be­tween 2016 and 2025—which co­in­cides with the nine-plus years the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has been in of­fice—amount­ed to $531.35 bil­lion.

Of that amount, $285.45 bil­lion was spent on trans­fers and sub­si­dies, some 53.72 per cent of to­tal ex­pen­di­ture, which in­clud­ed sub­stan­tial sums of mon­ey spent on the fu­el sub­sidy and bil­lions trans­ferred to WASA and T&TEC to keep util­i­ty rates low. T&T res­i­dents al­so ben­e­fit from huge sub­si­dies on the cost of ed­u­ca­tion, health­care, state hous­ing and in­tra-is­land trans­porta­tion, as well as a range of grants to thou­sands of peo­ple.

Mr Mitchell is right that the mas­sive amount of mon­ey that has been spent on trans­fers and sub­si­dies by the three ad­min­is­tra­tions in the 21st cen­tu­ry has mod­er­at­ed the cost of liv­ing.

But it is al­so ac­cu­rate to state that since the 14 per cent wage hike for pub­lic ser­vants and teach­ers grant­ed in 2014 and 2015, com­pen­sa­tion for work­ers in this coun­try has not kept pace with the in­creas­es in the cost of liv­ing.

This has meant that the qual­i­ty of life of a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly those em­ployed by the State, has de­clined in re­al terms.

Sec­ond­ly, we are sure that, on re­flec­tion, Mr Mitchell would ac­knowl­edge that some­one's qual­i­ty of life is much more than whether their com­pen­sa­tion keeps up with in­fla­tion.

Qual­i­ty of life met­rics must mean that peo­ple live free from fear that gun-tot­ing killers would not kick down their doors with mur­der in mind. Qual­i­ty of life goes to is­sues such as the length of time spent in traf­fic dai­ly, the stan­dard of ser­vice de­liv­ery in the na­tion's hos­pi­tals and the abil­i­ty of a fam­i­ly trav­el­ling over­seas on va­ca­tion to buy for­eign cur­ren­cy they need.

In many re­spects then, life in T&T is sweet for some but sour for many.