Our coun­try is faced with a cost of liv­ing cri­sis. The in­creased cost of goods and food prices have many peo­ple strug­gling to sur­vive.

The glob­al eco­nom­ic slow­down, the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic, the dis­rup­tion in the sup­ply chain, and our de­pen­dence on the pe­tro­le­um mar­ket all con­tributed to this.

The Gov­ern­ment has both a moral and fis­cal oblig­a­tion to use our tax dol­lars to al­le­vi­ate this. They were elect­ed to man­age those funds on be­half of the pop­u­la­tion.

A gov­ern­ment has to man­age the econ­o­my, re­duce na­tion­al debt, in­crease sav­ings, and stim­u­late the econ­o­my with­out caus­ing un­due hard­ship to its peo­ple.

The 2024 Bud­get saw Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert at­tempt­ing to pro­vide some re­lief for those in need. The in­crease in the min­i­mum wage to $20.50 per hour, the school sup­ply grant, and the back­pay for the 37,000 em­ploy­ees who ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent wage in­crease were among such mea­sures.

Im­bert said, “Fis­cal mea­sures will fo­cus on im­prov­ing the well-be­ing of every in­di­vid­ual in our so­ci­ety so that they can reach their full po­ten­tial. We’re in­vest­ing in our peo­ple.”

That is, of course, if they don’t suc­cumb to crime.

While he promised that po­lice re­cruits will be in­creased next year, an im­me­di­ate ef­fect on crime can be had if we utilise our De­fence Force in a joint force.

I want­ed to hear of na­tion­wide CCTV cam­eras with pub­lic ac­cess to de­crease car thefts and fol­low crim­i­nals at every cor­ner of our coun­try.

The TTPS em­ploy­ing the use of so­cial me­dia to en­hance com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween cit­i­zens was al­ready in­tro­duced by for­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith and dis­con­tin­ued.

New po­lice ve­hi­cles and equip­ment were promised be­fore.

What about the body cam­eras for po­lice? The radars and drones?

Mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed for a River­ine Po­lice Unit re­minds me of the ma­rine unit which was dis­band­ed years ago.

We heard about new scan­ners.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said, “We ex­pect the net deficit of WASA to be sub­stan­tial­ly nar­rowed fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the WASA price re­view by the RIC.”

WASA’s predica­ment is part­ly due to ad­min­is­tra­tions plac­ing in­ef­fi­cient in­di­vid­u­als to run this com­pa­ny. It is un­fair for tax­pay­ers to pay for this.

The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry re­struc­tur­ing the Food Card Pro­gramme to in­clude a manda­to­ry mar­ket box com­po­nent was spo­ken of be­fore.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said un­em­ploy­ment has dropped in 2023 and T&T was the on­ly coun­try in the re­gion and Latin Amer­i­ca with an im­prov­ing eco­nom­ic out­look.

In Ju­ly, Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vices af­firmed our Ba2 cred­it rat­ing, which is a non-in­vest­ment grade, but Min­is­ter Im­bert said that Stan­dard and Poor’s gave us a “BBB cred­it rat­ing with a sta­ble out­look” but this is their low­est “in­vest­ment” grade.

While we have to do bet­ter, Moody’s re­cent­ly warned the USA that their po­lit­i­cal stand­off would harm that coun­try’s cred­it. Fitch al­so down­grad­ed the long-term US sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ing by one notch in Au­gust. Fitch cit­ed “ex­pect­ed fis­cal de­te­ri­o­ra­tion over the next three years.”

Our Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee’s Sep­tem­ber re­port has al­so in­di­cat­ed a “de­cline in head­line in­fla­tion” and the eas­ing of food price in­fla­tion.

I prob­a­bly shopped in the wrong su­per­mar­ket.

Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, was pleased that the Gov­ern­ment wants to pay pub­lic ser­vants their back­pay by Christ­mas, say­ing, “This move will al­low mon­ey to be in­ject­ed in­to the lo­cal econ­o­my.”

But he al­so said the cham­ber was very con­cerned about how prop­er­ty tax will be val­ued for peo­ple with mid­dle- and high-in­come prop­er­ties.

Costs were men­tioned in the Bud­get for low-in­come hous­es. He said the cham­ber al­so wants more in­for­ma­tion on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change and wants forex dis­trib­uted fair­ly to busi­ness­es who need it.

Cer­tain busi­ness­peo­ple strug­gle to ac­cess forex and it is even worse for the av­er­age cit­i­zen. We need bet­ter trans­paren­cy from the banks.

Our coun­try, which saw oil booms with overnight mil­lion­aires and bling cul­ture, has to read­just.

Our oil lifestyle made us en­joy a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing than our neigh­bours. Now, each cit­i­zen must pre­pare to take a fall and re­build.

Our watch­words, Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion, Tol­er­ance, must not just be words.

Ad­min­is­tra­tions have been guilty of cre­at­ing a de­pen­den­cy syn­drome among the pop­u­la­tion, mould­ing and shap­ing our en­ti­tle­ment men­tal­i­ty, some­times for po­lit­i­cal gain.

Oil dol­lars can no longer work for us, so we need tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars to work for us.

Some hard-work­ing in­di­vid­u­als may find it un­fair if their tax dol­lars are used to prop up non-pro­duc­tive in­sti­tu­tions filled with in­ef­fi­cient man­agers and work­ers.

Per­for­mance and not po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion must be the new norm.

We need strong lead­er­ship to stim­u­late a new ef­fi­cient work eth­ic among us, with no room for idlers.