Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is set to present to 2022 bud­get in the next few days which will seek to do the im­pos­si­ble, that of a tight con­trol on ex­pen­di­ture while at the same time try­ing to tru­ly be­gin the trans­for­ma­tion of the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

In some ways Min­is­ter Im­bert is be­ing asked to car­ry a bur­den that should not be his to bear, as the role of eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion is for the en­tire Cab­i­net with the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning co­or­di­nat­ing if not lead­ing the charge.

As the late Lloyd Best of­ten re­mind­ed us, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is more of an ac­coun­tant/book keep­er whose job it is to bal­ance the books by look­ing at is­sues of rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture.

If we take that in­to ac­count that Mr Im­bert’s task gets a lit­tle clear­er and eas­i­er. He has to do a few things in his bud­get on Mon­day.

The first thing is he has to ac­count for the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my over the last year. Since the days of Lar­ry Howai there ap­pears to be a re­luc­tance to ac­count for the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my in the pre­ced­ing year, an ac­count of where we failed, where we suc­ceed­ed and there­fore we avoid the usu­al re­hash of projects that nev­er ac­tu­al­ly come to fruition.

Im­bert must lay out a clear and com­pelling ar­gu­ment for the state of the econ­o­my and how he in­tends to fi­nance the fis­cal mea­sures that he plans to im­ple­ment.

I am sure the Min­is­ter will blame the chal­lenges we are fac­ing square­ly on the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic but he must be warned that the pop­u­la­tion will see straight through such ver­bose.

Of course the black swan event called the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has had a dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect on the econ­o­my.

The shut­ting down of many sec­tors, the re­sult­ing un­em­ploy­ment and loss of rev­enue, the lack of cer­tain­ty that is so im­por­tant for in­vest­ing and the need to in­crease ex­pen­di­ture in health care and with rev­enues down and ex­pen­di­ture in­creased in some ar­eas there is no doubt that the coun­try had to in­crease its bor­row­ing and there­fore its debt to GDP ra­tio.

But the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and more­so the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion can­not get away from com­plete­ly mis­han­dling the econ­o­my from 2015 to 2020 while all the time kick­ing and scream­ing that it is the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to blame.

It is anal­o­gous to be­ing in a mar­riage with one par­ty blam­ing the chal­lenges they are fac­ing on what hap­pened with the ex.

There is no doubt that the UNC left the coun­try ex­posed, they con­tin­ued and has­tened the spend­ing of the wind­fall re­ceived from the en­er­gy sec­tor while not do­ing enough to en­sure the very sec­tor’s sus­te­nance.

The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion mis­man­aged many of the State en­ter­pris­es and the stench of cor­rup­tion per­vad­ed gov­er­nance and gov­ern­ment. But that was al­most sev­en years ago and to have blamed the UNC for our predica­ment for five years was a waste of time and a clas­sic case of de­flec­tion from the gov­ern­ment’s own fail­ings.

The mis­read­ing of the woes of the en­er­gy sec­tor is the rea­son the Fi­nance Min­is­ter in a high-priced en­er­gy en­vi­ron­ment can­not come to the coun­try and talk about a wind­fall from the en­er­gy sec­tor this year.

In case we have not been fol­low­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy sit­u­a­tion close­ly, crude prices have for the first nine months of the fi­nan­cial year av­er­age US $58 a bar­rel and nat­ur­al gas prices and petro­chem­i­cal prices are the strongest they have been in years. Yes this is a rel­a­tive­ly high priced en­vi­ron­ment.

Where we are fail­ing is in our pro­duc­tion pro­file.

The Gov­ern­ment says the right things but seem to suf­fer from paral­y­sis analy­sis, can­not im­ple­ment the nec­es­sary mea­sures. For six years it has had one failed near-shore bid round.

It has promised three bid rounds and the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy/Min­is­ter of Every­thing, Stu­art Young has failed to de­liv­er just as his pre­de­ces­sor, the late Franklin Khan.

In­stead what we have seen is a gov­ern­ment pre­oc­cu­pied with try­ing to bro­ker a deal on At­lantic LNG Train 1 with no gas avail­able to it and try­ing to blame every­one but them­selves for throw­ing away half a bil­lion dol­lars on that and an­oth­er ill fat­ed NGC project.

In case Mr Im­bert is pre­pared to lis­ten, I want to sug­gest that as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty the Gov­ern­ment should work close­ly with the multi­na­tion­als to in­crease oil and gas pro­duc­tion and get the three bid rounds go­ing.

I have it from good sources that all the tech­ni­cal work is done for the bid rounds and its the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate that is keep­ing back the process. Do your jobs please!

On the is­sue of the debt, I take the ar­gu­ment es­poused by the likes of Mary King that one way to deal with it is to get growth lev­els high­er that the cost of cap­i­tal.

That is to say if GDP is grow­ing by 6 per cent and you are bor­row­ing at 5 per cent you are fine. The chal­lenge is the struc­ture of the econ­o­my is such that those growth rates are un­like­ly if you do not have a sta­ble econ­o­my.

In any case the prob­lem this coun­try has is far more on the ex­pen­di­ture side of the econ­o­my and less so on the rev­enue side.

Dur­ing the 1994/2014 pe­ri­od we were able to mask a lot of the in­ef­fi­cient spend­ing based on rev­enue in­flows. It meant rather than us­ing the ex­tra mon­ey to fi­nal­ly fix flood­ing in Port-of-Spain or re­do the en­tire WASA sys­tem we spent it on cor­rup­tion, on trans­fers and sub­si­dies to non-per­form­ing state en­ter­pris­es and poor­ly-tar­get­ed make work and pover­ty re­duc­tion schemes.

Min­is­ter, if I were you I would have every Min­istry do an au­dit of its spend­ing pat­terns and de­ter­mine if we are get­ting val­ue for mon­ey and what we have to do to make it more ef­fi­cient.

Let me give you a sim­ple ex­am­ple. We pay $300 for a re­turn flight to To­ba­go. Can any­one who is rea­son­able not ac­cept that the break-even fare that we un­der­stand is $500 should be paid? What is the rea­son we are not pre­pared to have peo­ple pay the eco­nom­ic price of a tick­et be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go or even $100 on the fer­ry for a re­turn tick­et?

An air­line is not a maxi taxi ride. There are costs and we must be pre­pared to live with­in our means.

The need to get the ex­pen­di­ture side right does not negate the need for mea­sures like the re­turn of the prop­er­ty tax or the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty. But even in do­ing this it can­not be just the col­lec­tion of ad­di­tion­al rev­enue.

We have to get a clear leg­isla­tive com­mit­ment about how these rev­enues are to be spent in lo­cal gov­ern­ment or we end up hav­ing even more dis­trust in gov­ern­ment and tax­a­tion.

A lot has been said about the per­for­mance of the pub­lic ser­vice and we all know it is bloat­ed, that we need to re­duce the size but that it is not a num­bers game it is about re-imag­ing how a pub­lic ser­vice should serve our needs with high qual­i­ty, well trained and well com­pen­sat­ed in­di­vid­u­als.

Mr Im­bert, your task is not easy and you will get the blame for all the woes in this econ­o­my. But where is the Prime Min­is­ter in all of this and where is his Plan­ning Min­is­ter?

I will say though the Tourism Min­is­ter seems to be mak­ing some pos­i­tive moves and we are be­gin­ning to see the first fruit of the work of the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture while the Trade and Works Min­is­ters re­mains ac­tive.

Maybe the rest will join­ing in the hard work.

Cur­tis Williams is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and await­ing the open­ing of the safe zones.