Cur­tis Williams

The late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning chal­lenged us as a coun­try, as a so­ci­ety, to dare to think that by 2020, we could be­come a first-world coun­try.

Part of the chal­lenge in­volved the mod­erni­sa­tion of our econ­o­my, our so­ci­ety, and all of the ser­vices we pro­vide.

The Vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ment was built on five pil­lars: com­pet­i­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment; in­no­v­a­tive peo­ple; car­ing so­ci­ety; ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance; sound in­fra­struc­ture; and en­vi­ron­ment.

Its craft­ing in­volved many of the top minds and lead­ers in the coun­try. Vi­sion 2020 was meant, at least ini­tial­ly, to be bi­par­ti­san and had as its cor­ner­stone the mod­erni­sa­tion of every­thing from en­er­gy to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Man­ning him­self did not achieve some of his own tar­gets, es­pe­cial­ly on the is­sue of in­fla­tion that led to the over­heat­ing of the econ­o­my and made home-own­er­ship in par­tic­u­lar, out of the reach of the work­ing class. But at least he had a vi­sion, a call to ac­tion, a path­way that asked us to dream of mov­ing out of this third world, plan­ta­tion econ­o­my with poor in­fra­struc­ture, fail­ing state en­ter­pris­es, in­se­cu­ri­ty and un­sus­tain­able spend­ing.

It was recog­nised that to get there re­quired a growth rate that ex­ceed­ed in­fla­tion and that struc­tur­al re­forms, in­clud­ing the link­ing of the en­er­gy sec­tor to man­u­fac­tur­ing, were nec­es­sary.

Ten days ago, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed the 2022 Mid-Year Re­view and did a num­ber of things.

He told the coun­try that things were look­ing a lot bet­ter than it did when he pre­sent­ed the 2022 Bud­get last Oc­to­ber.

Rev­enue was sig­nif­i­cant­ly up, buoyed by the high­er re­ceipts from the en­er­gy sec­tor, with high­er rev­enue and more eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty that flowed from the open­ing up of the econ­o­my post-COVID-19 lock­downs.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter was pleased that he did not bor­row any mon­ey to meet Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture since the start of the year. In fact, he was now in a po­si­tion to pre­dict that he was un­like­ly to need to bor­row for the rest of the fi­nan­cial year, as en­er­gy prices were like­ly to re­main good for the next four months of the fis­cal year.

High­er rev­enue meant that the Gov­ern­ment could pay some of its bills, bills like its ef­fec­tive loan of with­hold­ing VAT re­funds to busi­ness­es. Imag­ine the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has the temer­i­ty to sug­gest that he was pro­vid­ing an im­pe­tus to busi­ness­es by re­pay­ing them their own mon­ey, which he ef­fec­tive­ly bor­rowed and which is nev­er reg­is­tered on the books as gov­ern­ment debt.

Be­yond that, the rev­enue gen­er­a­tion meant that some had to go to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. Im­bert and the Gov­ern­ment took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pat them­selves on the back for ad­her­ing to the law.

What the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance did not do was to ac­count to the peo­ple of T&T on the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my out­side of the wind­fall, and for which he has no con­trol and can take no cred­it.

You see, we all know that the prices of com­modi­ties are not sus­tain­able and will go down with­in the next 12 to 18 months. So, while the coun­try must be hap­py and make the best use of the wind­fall, it is not sus­tain­able, and in any case, T&T must fix the struc­tur­al prob­lems that af­flict the econ­o­my or we just will not do well as a coun­try.

If one had the pa­tience to look at the en­tire­ty of the de­bate, one would feel as if our MPs had ex­pe­ri­enced a state of malkadee. It is as if the need to ac­count for the mea­sures in the bud­get was not im­por­tant and the re­quire­ment to chart a vi­sion for the fu­ture not nec­es­sary.

Imag­ine the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy spends much of his time mak­ing the straw man ar­gu­ment that some­one was try­ing to tra­duce him by call­ing out his at­tempt, to at best pal­ter, when he did his in­ter­view with CNN’s Richard Quest.

What one might have hoped from the Min­is­ter, a de­fence that per­haps sug­gest­ed that should the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic iso­la­tion of Venezuela end, it is con­ceiv­able that there could be a path to both cross-bor­der and across-bor­der gas with the abil­i­ty to pro­duce all of the 10 tcf in Lo­ran/Man­a­tee and get an­oth­er 500 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day from gas be­ing flared off­shore Venezuela.

He could per­haps have talked about the BHP project and the plans to bring it to mar­ket, or the po­ten­tial of the new deep-wa­ter blocks on of­fer, or the plans to launch the on-land bid round, and the suc­cess of Touch­stone in­spir­ing in­ter­est in more on-land ex­plo­ration. But it is noth­ing but malkadee and hubris that al­low him to fo­cus on the mes­sen­ger and not the mes­sage.

We should have heard of the digi­ti­sa­tion plans and pub­lic sec­tor re­form that will see the mod­ernising of a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven pub­lic ser­vice and one where the State can le­git­i­mate­ly af­ford to pay peo­ple prop­er salaries while it re­trains and pre­pares those work­ers who will have to find al­ter­na­tive ca­reers for life in the pri­vate sec­tor.

Nei­ther the rul­ing par­ty nor the Op­po­si­tion seemed to think that the fo­cus must be on the gov­ern­ment eas­ing it­self out of the high lev­els of trans­fers and sub­si­dies and fo­cus­ing on pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was right to raise the is­sue of the amount of mon­ey spent on the Se­nior Cit­i­zen Grant and must put a plan in place to en­sure that in the next 15 to 20 years, the grant is not the bur­den it threat­ens to be and that con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sions plans must be the or­der of the day.

It can­not be good enough to live a life where you nev­er pay tax­es or NIS and get re­ward­ed for liv­ing to 65. Just to be clear, my moth­er re­ceives a por­tion of that grant, as she al­so re­ceives her NIS arrange­ments, and I am hap­py for her and all oth­ers. In fact, the ar­gu­ment I make here will ef­fec­tive­ly pre­clude me from such a grant should I live to 65. But we must seek what is in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try.

The Op­po­si­tion nev­er rais­es the is­sue of the rate of in­vest­ment in this econ­o­my which, as a com­po­nent of ag­gre­gate de­mand, in­vest­ment is im­por­tant, be­cause of its abil­i­ty to in­flu­ence the pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty of the econ­o­my and there­by boost eco­nom­ic growth.

The ac­cep­tance of the state of the roads, the 12-year Point Fortin High­way project, the hun­dreds of mur­ders, the crass­ness of the pol­i­tics, the abil­i­ty of the Prime Min­is­ter to be near­ly conned with no one ask­ing about the ab­sur­di­ty of him try­ing to reach the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al on his mo­bile phone, with no one to take notes and lis­ten­ing in on the call, all reek of a third-world so­ci­ety.

How else do you ac­cept the pol­i­tics of the day when we make a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball of the deep wounds in­flict­ed on chil­dren and the pass­ing of the buck on who saw or did not see the Robert Sab­ga re­port? The is­sue is why noth­ing has been done about the re­port.

What we are now in up­roar about is not just the fail­ure of the State to act, it is that our at­ten­tion has again been turned to the fail­ure of in­sti­tu­tions. In a cou­ple of weeks we will get over it, just as we got over the Scott Drug Re­port, just as we got over the re­port in­to T&TEC that nev­er en­vi­sioned a na­tion­al black­out, just as we got over the re­port in­to East Port-of-Spain.

We ac­cept that it is okay for Port-of-Spain to flood every rainy sea­son, we ac­cept that wa­ter will not be avail­able to us 24/7, we ac­cept that the po­lice will have a de­tec­tion rate of 15 per cent at best and we ac­cept that jus­tice must hap­pen at snail’s pace. We ac­cept be­ing third world.