SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

There will be no an­nounce­ment in Fri­day’s mid-year bud­get re­view of a new tar­iff rate by the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Asked if Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would make an an­nounce­ment of an in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives when he presents the mid-year bud­get re­view on June 7, Gon­za­les said via What­sApp mes­sage, “Nope.”

A Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle last month re­port­ed that un­der the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s pro­pos­al, elec­tric­i­ty bills could in­crease by as much as 124 per cent by 2028.

While the news is a tem­po­rary re­lief for T&TEC cus­tomers, econ­o­mists In­dera Sage­wan and Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon feel it is cru­cial for Im­bert to ex­plain to the pop­u­la­tion how Gov­ern­ment plans to deal with ris­ing crime and strate­gies aimed at boost­ing pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty, ex­ports, and forex earn­ings in his 2024 mid- year re­view pre­sen­ta­tion.

Sage­wan said the mid-year bud­get was sup­posed to be an ex­er­cise of ac­count­abil­i­ty to the pop­u­la­tion but it was al­ways a case of the Gov­ern­ment ask­ing for more mon­ey.

With crime on every­one’s lips, she said this grow­ing is­sue had been im­pact­ing on in­vest­ment, hu­man cap­i­tal and mi­gra­tion, which are crit­i­cal to the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try. She said rob­beries and rob­beries with vi­o­lence had been af­fect­ing the length of time busi­ness­es can stay open.

“It’s af­fect­ing the cost of do­ing busi­ness ... be­cause busi­ness­es have to in­cur so much ad­di­tion­al costs,” Sage­wan said, adding the spend­ing pow­er of in­di­vid­u­als is al­so be­ing im­pact­ed.

“You now have to spend your mon­ey on se­cu­ri­ty. We have less mon­ey to spend to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Sage­wan said she did not ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment to come up with any new crime-fight­ing mea­sures.

“If the best the Gov­ern­ment can do is to re-ap­point Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, who has not proven her­self ca­pa­ble in do­ing any­thing sig­nif­i­cant, then what else?”

With gen­er­al elec­tions around the cor­ner, Sage­wan said the Gov­ern­ment had been fix­ing this and build­ing that.

“That is why we are sud­den­ly see­ing roads be­ing fixed. You are go­ing to see more mon­ey be­ing put in­to the Min­istry of Works ... in­to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, be­cause these are the places that show up the ca­pac­i­ty of the in­cum­bents who have ac­cess to the pub­lic purse in or­der to do what it needs to do to cre­ate a no­tion in the minds of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion that they are do­ing some­thing.”

Ar­joon said T&T’s eco­nom­ic per­for­mance re­mained sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els, stand­ing at 6.4 per cent be­hind where the coun­try was in 2019.

“Over the past six years, we have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed a fis­cal deficit of $45 bil­lion. The first five months of this year have seen en­er­gy rev­enues at $5.1 bil­lion, which is $7 bil­lion less than the same pe­ri­od last year due to low­er glob­al LNG prices.”

Ar­joon said this sit­u­a­tion made it cru­cial for the mid-year re­view to dis­cuss how Gov­ern­ment plans to ac­cel­er­ate their bud­get­ed de­vel­op­ment strate­gies aimed at boost­ing pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty, ex­ports, and forex earn­ings.

He said the ex­che­quer ac­count for the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund was over­drawn in 2023 by $50.3 bil­lion, which is $20.7 bil­lion high­er than 2016.

Ar­joon said de­spite high­er in­ter­na­tion­al prices and ship­ping costs caused by the rerout­ing from the Suez Canal and a harsh busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment ri­fled with high­er tax­es, fu­el costs, crime and forex in­ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, non-en­er­gy sec­tor rev­enues in­creased by $3.53 bil­lion in the first five months of this year, dri­ven large­ly by man­u­fac­tur­ing.

How­ev­er, non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ers still ac­count for on­ly 6.5 per cent of our GDP.

“This high­lights the im­por­tance of re­mov­ing lo­cal busi­ness ob­sta­cles to fur­ther en­hance growth and con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al in­come and ex­port earn­ings. Crime needs to be a top fo­cus for the state, as this is de­ter­ring en­hanced in­vest­ment es­pe­cial­ly in non-en­er­gy and push­ing cap­i­tal flight,” he said.

He said plug­ging tax col­lec­tion gaps, such as clamp­ing down on delin­quent tax­pay­ers and re­quir­ing BIR num­bers for im­ports, was im­por­tant.