Some­where in the late 1970s, speak­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the late Dr Er­ic Williams made a com­ment for which he is wide­ly, but in­cor­rect­ly, quot­ed to this day.

What he ac­tu­al­ly said was, “Mon­ey is not an is­sue” al­though it was wide­ly re­port­ed as, “Mon­ey is no prob­lem.”

Ac­tu­al words aside, it was an ac­cu­rate de­pic­tion of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic health at the time. When the man revered as the fa­ther of this na­tion made that re­mark, T&T was in a very healthy eco­nom­ic po­si­tion. In­come from oil was at about US$920.8 mil­lion af­ter a decade of steady ex­pan­sion, pro­vid­ing this coun­try with al­most two-thirds of its in­come.

Those days are long gone. When Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert presents the 2019/2020 Bud­get to­mor­row, it will be against a back­drop of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion and a con­tin­ued re­liance on an oil in­dus­try that no longer yields the rev­enue that once made this the rich­est na­tion in the Caribbean.

While there is ex­pect­ed to be some mar­gin­al im­prove­ment in the bud­get deficit, which had been in the range of 3.40 per cent of T&T’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct in 2018, the re­al­i­ty is that the coun­try is still mired in debt. Suc­ces­sive po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions have been spend­ing much more than the coun­try earns, so re­cent fis­cal pack­ages have had to mea­sures to in­crease tax­es and cut spend­ing.

Al­though Mr Im­bert may seek to put a pos­i­tive spin on T&T’s eco­nom­ic po­si­tion—af­ter all this is a Bud­get be­ing pre­sent­ed just be­fore the coun­try shifts in­to elec­tion mode—it will be hard to shake off the spec­tre of fis­cal deficits which will con­tin­ue to put pres­sure on our in­ter­na­tion­al re­serves lev­els and the cur­ren­cy.

The most re­cent fore­casts from rat­ing agen­cies Moody’s and S&P are that T&T will con­tin­ue to bor­row just to pay the in­ter­est on cur­rent debt sev­er­al years in­to the fu­ture.

The ex­pec­ta­tion is that a re­stric­tive fis­cal pol­i­cy will have to be main­tained be­cause the State is bur­dened with a high pub­lic ser­vant salaries and wages bill, as well as high trans­fers and sub­si­dies.

Over the last decade, eco­nom­ic growth av­er­aged -0.5 per cent. The coun­try is far from a po­si­tion of fis­cal strength, due in no small part to mixed per­for­mances in the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors. De­clines in gas pro­duc­tion and prices on one hand and a nine per cent in­crease in oil prices plus a mar­gin­al im­prove­ment in out­put.

A fis­cal deficit in the range of $2,968.1 mil­lion and a re­duc­tion in the stock of for­eign ex­change, down to US$9,760.3 mil­lion or 7.9 months of im­port cov­er in the first half of this year are not mat­ters to be tri­fled with.

The bot­tom line is that mon­ey is an is­sue for this coun­try. If and how Mr Im­bert ad­dress­es this un­sus­tain­able debt bur­den will be­come clear to­mor­row.