One of the last posts on the US State De­part­ment’s web­site be­fore the “De­mo­c­rat-led” fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down in­di­cat­ed “US sup­port for the Gov­ern­ment’s Drag­on gas pro­pos­al and steps to en­sure it will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime.” This was a high­light of PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s at­ten­dance at UN­GA 80 in New York.

This de­vel­op­ment came af­ter our Prime Min­is­ter met with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio. Does this mean the OFAC li­cences will be reis­sued to ex­plore the Venezuela-Trin­ba­go cross-bor­der gas fields? If so, when? The pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment was able to se­cure 30-year com­mer­cial agree­ments with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment for the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin Fields.

The ag­gres­sive mes­sages re­cent­ly trad­ed by mem­bers of both gov­ern­ments seem to have con­firmed “Drag­on gas is dead,” as said by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar in April. For our coun­try to ben­e­fit, we need BOTH the US and Venezuela to be in sup­port at the same time. If we get the OFAC li­cences to­mor­row, when will the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment ho­n­our the agree­ments if the projects “will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime?” This is a case of “Schrödinger’s” Drag­on, with the project be­ing both dead and alive at the same time. As re­gards ben­e­fits to our coun­try, a half-dead Drag­on is as bad as an all-dead one. Un­less there is a new Venezue­lan pres­i­dent or a new Amer­i­can one, per­haps? Imag­ine the gi­ants of Trump and Maduro shak­ing hands! Dif­fi­cult? Per­haps we have the same chances of ac­cess­ing the Drag­on any­time soon. If on­ly our Gov­ern­ment could ac­cess that trea­sure to fund our up­com­ing bud­get!

At this writ­ing, the date of the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion has not yet been an­nounced. The Op­po­si­tion has pre­dict­ed Oc­to­ber 6. That would mean that the bud­get would not be passed un­til the end of the month. Bills have to be paid by the end of Oc­to­ber. The Up­per and Low­er House de­bates and the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ses­sions are go­ing to have to be cur­tailed to al­low for the var­i­ous ac­count­ing di­vi­sions to do their work.

The Bud­get will be the biggest test of the “new” Gov­ern­ment since com­ing in­to of­fice. Not a cit­i­zen is ex­pect­ing fur­ther “belt tight­en­ing,” even while we know that gov­ern­ment rev­enue is in de­cline. The forex cri­sis is proof enough. The labour unions, es­pe­cial­ly the PSA, are most anx­ious to hear when they will be get­ting the promised“10%” salary in­crease. Then there is TTUTA with their “mea­gre” 5% salary in­creas­es, which are yet to be paid, along with their back­pay. Will time­lines be pro­vid­ed?

For­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert claims that one rea­son for our S&P cred­it rat­ing down­grade was the scrap­ping of new rev­enue streams, which would have come from the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty and Prop­er­ty Tax im­ple­men­ta­tion. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has promised to tight­en up NIB and its struc­tures for rev­enue col­lec­tion in the ab­sence of the TTRA. Can we de­pend on the pub­lic ser­vice, as is, to op­er­ate more ef­fi­cient­ly and prof­itably? Per­haps prop­er­ty tax will be im­posed on in­dus­tries and com­mer­cial op­er­a­tors in a man­ner which will not hin­der their gen­er­a­tion of forex. Per­haps Lands and Build­ings tax­es will be rein­tro­duced for res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties.

We ex­pect that SMEs will be prop­er­ly sup­port­ed to seize greater mar­ket share. Eas­i­er ac­cess to small busi­ness loans and re­fi­nanc­ing through NED­CO, ADB, FCB and oth­er banks, along with oth­er busi­ness de­vel­op­ment re­sources, would be a good start. All prop­er­ly reg­is­tered SMEs should be al­lowed a cer­tain amount of forex based on their line of busi­ness and lev­els of pro­duc­tion and sales.

There are about 20,000 SMEs that em­ploy many thou­sands of work­ers. If they are al­lowed to thrive, more jobs will be cre­at­ed and op­er­a­tions will be de­cen­tralised. This would as­sist com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and even ease the dai­ly na­tion­al traf­fic bur­dens. I be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment will seek to in­tro­duce eq­ui­ty in forex dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Farm­ers will be in­cen­tivised to re­place im­port­ed items that can be pro­duced lo­cal­ly. Agro-pro­cess­ing and the pro­mo­tion of lo­cal­ly grown al­ter­na­tives to im­ports will most like­ly be pur­sued. More must be done for the pro­mo­tion of our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. Many coun­tries in­spired pa­tri­o­tism and pro­mot­ed “made in…” Why can’t we seek out and pro­mote more “Made in Trin­ba­go” prod­ucts?

What are the low-hang­ing fruit for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion? We need a lot and fast to gen­er­ate the kind of rev­enue re­quired to pay our cit­i­zens their de­served wages and pro­vide prop­er roads, re­li­able util­i­ties, health­care and se­cu­ri­ty. Can we de­vel­op our mar­itime ser­vices sec­tor? Don’t we have the safest har­bours in the Caribbean? Do we have enough land and ex­per­tise to pro­vide kilo­litres of Scor­pi­on Pep­per Sauce to the world, a la Tabas­co? Don’t we have some of the best co­coa in the world? Why can’t we sell tons of gourmet choco­late? Why can’t our suc­cess­ful lo­cal con­glom­er­ates piv­ot to earn­ing forex in­stead of guz­zling it? If the Gov­ern­ment can’t di­ver­si­fy eas­i­ly, can’t our na­tive busi­ness in­tel­li­gentsia show the way?

What about waste dis­pos­al and re­cy­cling? Solve our pol­lu­tion and waste dis­pos­al is­sues while gen­er­at­ing forex through the man­u­fac­ture of re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als. Our scrap iron in­dus­try is out front. The Bev­er­age Con­tain­ers Bill that I worked on as min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources is a great place to start. I look for­ward to its re­turn.