Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day dou­bled down on her Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to shift its spend­ing pri­or­i­ties, by an­nounc­ing a sweep­ing cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tive aimed at redi­rect­ing pub­lic funds to­ward es­sen­tial ser­vices.

In a strong­ly word­ed Face­book post ti­tled “Enough waste. Time to put peo­ple first,” the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day out­lined her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s im­me­di­ate ac­tions to curb what she de­scribed as years of un­nec­es­sary gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture.

“For far too long, your tax dol­lars have gone to waste, mil­lions spent on ads, lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles, ex­pen­sive rentals, and perks for a priv­i­leged few,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pledged that funds pre­vi­ous­ly al­lo­cat­ed to non-es­sen­tial gov­ern­ment ac­tiv­i­ties will now be used to di­rect­ly ben­e­fit cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing on: crime re­duc­tion ef­forts, road re­pairs and in­fra­struc­ture up­grades, school and hos­pi­tal im­prove­ments and fi­nan­cial re­lief for work­ing-class cit­i­zens.

Con­tact­ed on the prospect of cuts on me­dia ad­ver­tis­ing yes­ter­day, Me­dia In­sti­tute of the Caribbean pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj not­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s move was in re­sponse to fis­cal pres­sures which she pre­vi­ous­ly flagged. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj, a for­mer head of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA), said she was not ex­pect­ing ma­jor im­pacts on the me­dia land­scape.

“This is not a can­cel­la­tion, but it is a hold while all as­pects are un­der re­view and that is nor­mal with any busi­ness which is hav­ing its chal­lenges, es­pe­cial­ly fi­nan­cial chal­lenges. There has to be an eval­u­a­tion, and gov­ern­ment, in essence, is a busi­ness and is sup­posed to work in the in­ter­est of all cit­i­zens.”

Ma­haraj said she hoped the hold was tem­po­rary and would not dis­rupt op­er­a­tions at me­dia hous­es.

Mean­while, the TTP­BA pres­i­dent Dou­glas Wil­son said while he ex­pect­ed mem­bers to be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed, he ap­pre­ci­at­ed that busi­ness­es and Gov­ern­ment alike would pri­ori­tise spend­ing.

Not­ing cuts are not new, Wil­son said, “Pri­or to COVID-19 and post, there have been cuts in ad­ver­tis­ing spend by all gov­ern­ment and state en­ti­ties. Clos­er to 70 per cent re­duc­tion, not ad­just­ing up­ward at any stage, but re­duc­ing to even low­er lev­els since COVID.

The pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion al­so al­ready fo­cus­es ex­ten­sive­ly on low­est cost.”

He said these were mar­ket con­di­tions which the me­dia have been nav­i­gat­ing for sev­er­al years.

How­ev­er, he added, “Where TTP­BA be­lieves Gov­ern­ment needs to fo­cus is the un­doc­u­ment­ed rev­enue leak­age through In­ter­net ad­ver­tis­ing place­ment di­rect­ly with the tech­nol­o­gy gi­ants abroad. This needs to be on the radar of the Gov­ern­ment/Min­istry of Fi­nance. This is for­eign ex­change leak­age and wor­ry­ing­ly, this busi­ness prac­tice by­pass­es the lo­cal tax­es for land­ed goods.

“More di­rect­ly stat­ed, some lo­cal ad­ver­tis­ing ap­pears on lo­cal me­dia plat­forms, but Google etc are the ones paid. Lo­cal me­dia plat­forms are un­able com­pete with those in­ter­na­tion­al rates which are ex­treme­ly low, based on their economies of scale. So TTP­BA is say­ing look af­ter this rev­enue gap. TTP­BA backs its mem­bers to find so­lu­tions and con­tin­ue their im­por­tant role in the so­ci­ety at large.”

Mean­while, for­mer com­mu­ni­ca­tions min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, Symon de No­bri­ga, said his par­ty had al­so tak­en steps to man­age costs re­lat­ed to main­stream me­dia ad­ver­tis­ing. He, how­ev­er, cau­tioned against any fur­ther ad­just­ments.

“I think if you elim­i­nate that, then you are go­ing to run in­to the risk of the pop­u­la­tion not be­ing in­formed or be­ing ad­e­quate­ly in­formed as to what is hap­pen­ing across the min­istries and what the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment is.”

Econ­o­mists weigh in

Al­so con­tact­ed, econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said while it was com­mend­able that Gov­ern­ment want­ed to man­age pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture by cut­ting waste and redi­rect­ing funds to­ward es­sen­tial ser­vices, more in­for­ma­tion about the strat­e­gy was need­ed.

“It would be help­ful to see clear da­ta on how much are these sav­ings and how the redi­rect­ed funds are be­ing strate­gi­cal­ly pri­ori­tised with­in the broad­er na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­da,” Dr Attzs said.

She said mov­ing for­ward, fis­cal man­age­ment will be es­sen­tial to main­tain­ing eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty. “Pru­dent fis­cal man­age­ment is al­ways wel­come, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the grow­ing fis­cal deficit high­light­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter,” she said.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon al­so con­tend­ed that the cuts to ad­ver­tis­ing, rentals, se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, and oth­er non-core line items was a first step in help­ing to re-an­chor fis­cal cred­i­bil­i­ty and show Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to trim its own dis­cre­tionary spend­ing first.

“These are in­deed quick-to-im­ple­ment cuts and sig­nal to rat­ings agen­cies that the state is pre­pared to rein in spend­ing and avoid need­less bor­row­ing for non-es­sen­tial out­lays. At the same time, these are not harsh ex­pen­di­ture-cut­ting mea­sures and there­fore will not af­fect vul­ner­a­ble house­holds, while it al­so buys time to de­sign deep­er struc­tur­al re­forms.

“To­geth­er, these cuts can free hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars that can be redi­rect­ed to pri­or­i­ty out­lays such as so­cial pro­tec­tion, health­care main­te­nance, and cat­alyt­ic in­fra­struc­ture, en­sur­ing that scarce pub­lic funds do the great­est good at a mo­ment of shrink­ing rev­enues, and does not widen the fis­cal deficit.”

Dr Ar­joon said be­yond the cost-cut­ting mea­sures, sim­i­lar sav­ings that will not cause eco­nom­ic hard­ship can be found in curb­ing of­fi­cial trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty for gov­ern­ment and state of­fi­cials, merg­ing over­lap­ping state agen­cies and ra­tio­nal­is­ing trans­fers to state en­ti­ties.