What the Bud­get says is that based on a pop­u­la­tion of about 1, 365,000 cit­i­zens, for each one of us, the Gov­ern­ment es­ti­mat­ed in­come will be $30,300 and ex­pen­di­ture $36,315 per head. It will spend $6,015 more per per­son than it would earn. Sur­pris­ing­ly, it is cush­ion­ing our lives pre­cise­ly as it had done dur­ing times when oil and gas rev­enues flood­ed its cof­fers al­though, by the force of cir­cum­stance, the re­al Car­ni­val is over. We must now pay mar­ket prices for gas, and eat nu­tri­tious lo­cal fruits if we can’t af­ford the for­eign ones. In a short time, we’ll have to pay more for elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter so start get­ting used to sav­ing en­er­gy and the pre­cious liq­uid.

For many cit­i­zens, there’s still free: trans­porta­tion, health care, low-cost hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, and trans­porta­tion. And the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to be the bene­fac­tor to the most vul­ner­a­ble amongst us for near­ly all their needs. Added to that, it has re­duced in­come tax by $250 month­ly for every work­ing adult earn­ing over $7,000 month­ly. Be­low that in­come, work­ers pay none. That ex­tra cash could buy a lot of flour and rice for the av­er­age fam­i­ly.

The Gov­ern­ment has been very gen­er­ous even though it stands be­tween a rock and a hard place, with dwin­dling rev­enues and main­tain­ing an ef­fi­cient so­cial safe­ty net.

Over the years, po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy drove a cul­ture of de­pen­den­cy. So­cial wel­fare is, per­haps, the most sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er to self-suf­fi­cien­cy when not ad­e­quate­ly tar­get­ed and im­ple­ment­ed and there­fore pro­motes so­cial in­equity. The time when sub­si­dies and free­ness sans a vi­able eco­nom­ic mod­el to sup­port such costs is up­on us. The Gov­ern­ment had done well in sta­bil­is­ing the econ­o­my over the past five years af­ter the dis­as­trous de­cline in en­er­gy prices from 2015 there­abouts, cou­pled with trea­sury raids. No one could have an­tic­i­pat­ed a flu pan­dem­ic.

While we could nev­er set aside the grief of so many deaths, COVID may yet prove to be a bless­ing in dis­guise. It’s forc­ing us to buck­le up and open our eyes to op­por­tu­ni­ties as it tum­bles economies that were head­ing for crash­es any­way, and it shows up in­equities. That’s true in ed­u­ca­tion, as ac­cess to learn­ing is de­pen­dent on ac­cess to Wi-Fi and com­put­ers, which thou­sands of par­ents can’t af­ford. Ed­u­ca­tion is a Gov­ern­ment oblig­a­tion, and the plan to en­sure all chil­dren can ben­e­fit from on­line learn­ing is a nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tion. Para­phras­ing the Fa­ther of Our Na­tion: “The fu­ture of the na­tion is in chil­dren’s lap­top bags.”

The Gov­ern­ment is on the right track by di­vest­ing it­self of ven­tures that are best served by pri­vate cap­i­tal. It had cre­at­ed sev­er­al state en­ter­pris­es to es­cape the pub­lic ser­vice bu­reau­cra­cy among oth­er rea­sons. Still, many turned out to be ex­ten­sions of the bu­reau­crat­ic sys­tem. Pub­lic sec­tor ef­fi­cien­cy is crit­i­cal to fu­ture pros­per­i­ty. Will the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty and the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute fall in the same cul­tur­al traps? The ben­e­fits of e-gov­ern­ment with­out changes in cul­ture and struc­ture won’t be achieved.

It is ap­pre­ci­at­ed that the Gov­ern­ment can’t bring about a trans­for­ma­tion of the sec­tor with­out con­sti­tu­tion­al change. That re­quires the co­op­er­a­tion of all arms of gov­er­nance—the State. If there’s a time for ma­tu­ri­ty, com­mon-sense and hard de­ci­sions about non-per­form­ing In­sti­tu­tions it’s now. Crime, in­clud­ing pub­lic cor­rup­tion, re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant risk to so­cial and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. The con­sti­tu­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion must be ad­dressed if we are to deal ef­fi­cient­ly with cor­rup­tion. It’s time to stop hid­ing be­hind the fa­cade of hu­man re­source gaps, but there is a man­pow­er prob­lem atop a choked pipeline that should be dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly oth­er­wise the chances of suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of cor­rup­tion are slim.

The mo­ment calls for “na­tive in­ge­nu­ity,” imag­i­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion across the spec­trum. It places agri­cul­ture at the cen­tre of the food sup­ply chain, and the na­tion’s health. That’s in­spir­ing. The mea­sures for pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in build­ing low-cost hous­ing, di­vest­ment of the Port, e-Gov­ern­ment, and oth­er ini­tia­tives au­gur well for pri­vate in­vest­ments, free­ing up frozen liq­uid­i­ty, and even­tu­al­ly cre­at­ing sus­tain­able jobs.

Striv­ing to­ward new pros­per­i­ty is a vein run­ning through the Bud­get, which tries to bal­ance the harsh eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties with so­cial needs. Yup, the Car­ni­val is over.