An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Econ­o­mists and busi­ness lead­ers are call­ing for long-term re­forms to T&T’s wage ne­go­ti­a­tion sys­tem af­ter the gov­ern­ment con­firmed that out­stand­ing set­tle­ments for thou­sands of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers will be ad­dressed in fis­cal 2027.

The is­sue emerged dur­ing a CNC3 pan­el dis­cus­sion fol­low­ing Mon­day’s Mid-Year Re­view, in which Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo told nurs­es, teach­ers and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers await­ing set­tle­ments that “re­lief is com­ing” and that the rel­e­vant ap­pro­pri­a­tions would be made in the next fi­nan­cial year.

More than 60,000 unionised work­ers have been await­ing the res­o­lu­tion of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions, some stretch­ing back years.

Busi­ness­woman Di­ane Hadad said work­ers had been wait­ing far too long for pay­ments that are owed to them.

“To be fair to both par­ties in­volved, they have held on for a very long time. It’s way over­due,” she said.

Hadad sup­port­ed the pay­ment of out­stand­ing ar­rears but ar­gued that im­proved re­mu­ner­a­tion should be ac­com­pa­nied by stronger ac­count­abil­i­ty and ser­vice de­liv­ery with­in the pub­lic sec­tor.

“I be­lieve in pay­ing the debt,” she said, adding that work­ers should take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­liv­er­ing ser­vices to cit­i­zens at the high­est stan­dard once those oblig­a­tions are set­tled. She sug­gest­ed that con­cerns about work eth­ic with­in parts of the pub­lic ser­vice should be ad­dressed as part of the wider con­ver­sa­tion.

Econ­o­mist Dr Jamelia Har­ris said the chal­lenge ex­tends be­yond the cur­rent wage set­tle­ments and re­flects a long­stand­ing weak­ness in the coun­try’s ap­proach to labour ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“We keep hav­ing the same con­ver­sa­tions about wage ne­go­ti­a­tions,” she said.

Har­ris not­ed that T&T has his­tor­i­cal­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed wages retroac­tive­ly, re­sult­ing in sig­nif­i­cant back­pay li­a­bil­i­ties that place pres­sure on pub­lic fi­nances then set­tle­ments are even­tu­al­ly reached.

“What I would like to see is a con­ver­sa­tion that takes us away from this retroac­tive ne­go­ti­a­tion be­cause we will al­ways have this fis­cal strain,” she ar­gued.
She said fu­ture gov­ern­ments will con­tin­ue to face the same prob­lem un­less pro­vi­sions are built in­to bud­gets for an­tic­i­pat­ed wage set­tle­ments.

Har­ris main­tained that pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to move be­yond sim­ply set­tling ex­ist­ing claims and fo­cus on re­struc­tur­ing the sys­tem it­self.

“We can­not keep do­ing the same thing and ex­pect dif­fer­ent re­sults,” she con­tend­ed.
Point­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port for fis­cal 2025, Har­ris not­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $60 bil­lion re­mains un­col­lect­ed by the State.

“There is $60 bil­lion in mon­ey that the gov­ern­ment has not col­lect­ed that is owed to the gov­ern­ment,” she said.

She sug­gest­ed im­proved rev­enue col­lec­tion could help cre­ate fis­cal space for broad­er re­forms while re­duc­ing fu­ture pres­sures on the Trea­sury.

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon agreed that work­ers de­serve to be paid and wel­comed the gov­ern­ment’s ac­knowl­edge­ment of the out­stand­ing debt.

“It is pos­i­tive that the gov­ern­ment has recog­nised the debt and that work­ers are go­ing to be paid at a par­tic­u­lar point in time come 2027,” he said.

Ramkissoon al­so agreed that the coun­try’s wage ne­go­ti­a­tion process re­quires im­prove­ment, not­ing that pro­longed bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods have re­sult­ed in sub­stan­tial ar­rears ac­cu­mu­lat­ing over time.

“I think pub­lic ser­vants, their ar­rears are long over­due,” he re­marked. How­ev­er, he said the dis­cus­sion should not fo­cus sole­ly on pay­ing out­stand­ing set­tle­ments.
Ramkissoon ar­gued that pub­lic sec­tor re­form must ac­com­pa­ny any ef­fort to im­prove com­pen­sa­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the gov­ern­ment ex­pects greater ef­fi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from the pub­lic ser­vice.

“If we want to move to some­thing new, I would like to see us deal with the re­form of the pub­lic sec­tor and have the pub­lic sec­tor be­come much more pro­duc­tive,” he said.

He added that while pay­ment of ar­rears is nec­es­sary, im­prov­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions should re­main a pri­or­i­ty for pol­i­cy­mak­ers.

En­er­gy spe­cial­ist Gre­go­ry McGuire warned that fi­nanc­ing large wage set­tle­ments could be­come in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult giv­en chal­lenges fac­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor, which re­mains the coun­try’s pri­ma­ry source of gov­ern­ment rev­enue.
“The en­er­gy sec­tor con­tin­ues to pro­vide the biggest chunk of mon­ey for meet­ing gov­ern­ment ex­pens­es,” he said.
McGuire point­ed to de­clin­ing gas pro­duc­tion and un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing en­er­gy prices as fac­tors that could af­fect rev­enue col­lec­tions over the com­ing year.

“When you’re in a sit­u­a­tion where the sec­tor is in cri­sis, with gas sup­ply be­ing low, with pro­duc­tion falling, and prices were high over the last few months, but once the war sit­u­a­tion in the Mid­dle East is be­hind us, you may find that prices will con­tin­ue to tum­ble again,” he cau­tioned.

He not­ed that in­creased pro­duc­tion from both Guyana and Venezuela could add to glob­al sup­ply, cre­at­ing fur­ther down­ward pres­sure on prices if de­mand growth does not keep pace.

“Gov­ern­ment rev­enue from the en­er­gy sec­tor is like­ly to be flat or de­cline over the next few months and dur­ing the next year,” McGuire said.
That re­al­i­ty, he sug­gest­ed, could com­pli­cate the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to fi­nance wage set­tle­ments and oth­er spend­ing com­mit­ments.
“So Min­is­ter Tan­coo is re­al­ly in a tight sit­u­a­tion,” he added.

While pan­el­lists broad­ly sup­port­ed the even­tu­al pay­ment of out­stand­ing wage set­tle­ments, the dis­cus­sion high­light­ed con­cerns about how fu­ture gov­ern­ments will man­age sim­i­lar oblig­a­tions if long­stand­ing is­sues sur­round­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, pub­lic sec­tor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and rev­enue col­lec­tion re­main un­re­solved.