One econ­o­mist is say­ing the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my is not an easy process and a range of sec­tors in­clud­ing ser­vices is need­ed to start mov­ing the wheels.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Thurs­day, econ­o­mist Dr Ralph Hen­ry said for years ad­min­is­tra­tions have spo­ken about di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, but that means a much-trans­formed labour force, bet­ter equipped with ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing to de­liv­er goods and ser­vices in a com­pet­i­tive glob­al econ­o­my.

Hen­ry said this seems to be the re­mit of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, which to its cred­it fo­cus­es on much more than the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

“The ma­jor chal­lenge re­mains rais­ing rev­enue. The en­er­gy sec­tor can no longer be re­lied on to pro­vide rev­enue or to gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change as be­fore. There is a need to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and in par­tic­u­lar the sources for earn­ing for­eign ex­change,” he ex­plained.

Look­ing in-depth in­to the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for some min­istries, Hen­ry said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in the 2024 Bud­get, in­di­cat­ed the in­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment to raise rev­enue of $54.012 bil­lion, but spend $59.209 bil­lion, which lands him with a deficit of $5.197 bil­lion.

“Many cit­i­zens and groups had made rec­om­men­da­tions to the Min­is­ter on items that need­ed to be ad­dressed in his bud­get. He knew that he had to dis­ap­point many since he had to lim­it ex­pen­di­ture giv­en the rev­enue ex­pec­ta­tion.”

One con­cern raised by mem­bers of the pub­lic, Hen­ry said, is the lev­el of the ex­pen­di­ture on health of $7.409 bil­lion and ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing with $ 8.022 bil­lion which got the largest pieces of the pie.

“Ques­tions are be­ing asked why the ex­pen­di­ture on the Min­istry of Health build­ing on Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah for $280 mil­lion? Should that not have been al­lo­cat­ed else­where?

“On the mat­ter of the build­ing for the Min­istry of Health, the Min­is­ter an­swered him­self. The Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to re­duce its pay­ments on rental of build­ings from the pri­vate sec­tor, in hous­ing var­i­ous sec­tions of the Min­istry in dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions in Port of Spain and else­where,” the econ­o­mist ob­served.

Stay­ing on the sub­ject of health and ex­pen­di­ture, he said it must be recog­nised that a healthy pop­u­la­tion is like­ly to be a more pro­duc­tive pop­u­la­tion.

“There is a high in­ci­dence of lifestyle or non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases that af­flict our pop­u­la­tion. There is an in­creas­ing in­ci­dence of obe­si­ty even among school chil­dren. My con­cern about the health bud­get would be not so much about the quan­tum but rather about the at­ten­tion giv­en to pre­ven­ta­tive rather than cu­ra­tive fo­cus,” the econ­o­mist pro­posed.

The im­por­tance of di­et and ex­er­cise, Hen­ry said, needs to be raised to a high­er lev­el of con­scious­ness.

“In­deed, I note that the Min­is­ter of Health ap­peared in a walk around Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah some weeks ago. The min­is­ter’s ap­pear­ing more of­ten as train­er might be an ex­cel­lent way of mar­ket­ing well­ness, which will help in re­duc­ing the bud­get for cu­ra­tive care, for pa­tients with di­a­betes, and hy­per­ten­sion. We shall all die of some­thing, but even as we live longer, we can re­duce the cost of liv­ing to our fi­nal demise,” he out­lined.

Spend­ing wise­ly

Hen­ry point­ed out, that while he holds no brief to an­swer for the Fi­nance Min­is­ter or the Gov­ern­ment for that mat­ter, his con­cerns of the lev­el of ex­pen­di­ture might be eas­i­ly al­layed if cer­tain is­sues are ad­dressed in the de­tails of the al­lo­ca­tion among the min­istries in treat­ing with the busi­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy of so­cial ser­vices.

And it is against this back­drop that he said the pub­lic can look at the ex­pen­di­ture on so­cial ser­vices, even on tax­es and on crime.

“Why no in­crease in tax­es? Well, we shall have some in­creas­es in tax­es on house­holds in Jan­u­ary 2024, when the Gov­ern­ment re­stores the col­lec­tion of land and build­ing tax­es. These were sus­pend­ed some years ago.

“The un­der­ly­ing prin­ci­ple is that we all do in­deed de­rive some val­ue from the ac­com­mo­da­tion that we en­joy in our homes, with the Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ing cer­tain ser­vices like roads, waste col­lec­tion, and se­cu­ri­ty. We shall be pay­ing for these ser­vices to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in Trinidad and pre­sum­ably to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” he said.

As­sess­ing how the Gov­ern­ment dealt with the se­ri­ous in­equal­i­ty is­sue that the coun­try faces, Hen­ry said Im­bert has in­creased the range of so­cial trans­fers rather than the lev­el.

For ex­am­ple, he iden­ti­fied that par­ents who can­not af­ford school books and sup­plies can now ac­cess a $1,000 grant for their school chil­dren.

“The min­i­mum wage has been in­creased from $17.50 to $20.50. Of course, there is still a need to deal with a high­ly-un­equal dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­come and wealth in the coun­try.”

Ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing

The ex­pen­di­ture on ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing must be as­sessed against the chal­lenge that the coun­try faces with­in the school sys­tem, es­pe­cial­ly at the sec­ondary lev­el.

Hen­ry said this un­holy dis­tinc­tion of first choice schools and the rest and so many stu­dents who do not get their first-choice school feel scarred for life and are made to feel like less­er be­ings at age 11 or 12.

“Their teach­ers and even their par­ents treat them as such. They live that out the rest of their lives, in­clud­ing their work­ing lives, with a sense of medi­oc­rity. As much as one-third of our work­force would have en­tered the work­force with in­com­plete sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.

“Notwith­stand­ing the pro­vi­sion of uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion some four or more decades now.

“This makes us a rel­a­tive­ly un­com­pet­i­tive coun­try com­pared to Es­to­nia, Sin­ga­pore, and oth­er small coun­tries with which we might com­pare our­selves,” the econ­o­mist re­marked.

He urged that ex­pen­di­ture on ed­u­ca­tion must be fo­cused on en­sur­ing qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion across the board in the for­mal sys­tem and ma­jor in­vest­ments must be made in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Oth­er­wise, the Gov­ern­ment would be mere­ly spend­ing mon­ey on ed­u­ca­tion, that is ex­pen­di­ture un­der the head­ing of ed­u­ca­tion with lim­it­ed re­turns.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, Hen­ry said the Gov­ern­ment has built out sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, where cit­i­zens in many com­mu­ni­ties can ac­cess ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes on­line.

Hen­ry said this im­me­di­ate­ly rais­es the is­sue of crime and its dev­as­ta­tion in so­ci­ety.

Cit­i­zens cross­ing in­to oth­er com­mu­ni­ties risk death, and he out­lined the mod­el of do­ing well in some com­mu­ni­ties is por­trayed by the gang leader.

“Teenage boys are at­tract­ed to the five G mod­els—gang and gun can lead to huge gold chain, gold ear­rings and even plen­ty of girls…Even if it all leads to a grave, you can go out to a big fu­ner­al by age 30 and have a gun salute! Our ex­pen­di­ture on ed­u­ca­tion, so­cial ser­vices, and on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty has to be co­or­di­nat­ed in fight­ing that mod­el of suc­cess in our com­mu­ni­ties,” Hen­ry said.

Fur­ther, he not­ed gang lead­ers are not en­thu­si­as­tic about their po­ten­tial re­cruits im­prov­ing their ed­u­ca­tion lest they be­come at­tract­ed to a more sta­ble and so­cial­ly ac­cept­able ca­reer.

While there has to be a firm fist in de­fang­ing the gangs, the econ­o­mist sug­gest­ed that there is a need for a help­ing hand to pull so many youths out of this cy­cle that en­gulfs all of us to the detri­ment of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Al­so, he said cam­eras across the length and breadth of the coun­try mon­i­tored 24/7 will im­prove de­tec­tion rates and de­ter crim­i­nals.

“If the bud­get ad­dress­es these is­sues through the col­lab­o­ra­tion among Min­istries and De­part­ments and across our com­mu­ni­ties, the ap­par­ent huge ex­pen­di­tures on health and ed­u­ca­tion, and the so­cial ser­vices might be very well jus­ti­fied. In­deed, if we suc­ceed this time around, the ex­pen­di­ture on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty may not in fu­ture have to be larg­er than on the so­cial ser­vices min­istry,” Hen­ry con­clud­ed.