To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

There is much that was good in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's 2011 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. In many re­spects, the bud­get was re­mark­ably sim­i­lar to the last two bud­gets pre­sent­ed by for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira. While there are those on both sides of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum who would take of­fence to that state­ment, there is much to be said for eco­nom­ic con­ti­nu­ity and pre­dictabil­i­ty. Ex­cept for a name change and slight­ly dif­fer­ent em­pha­sis, the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has adopt­ed the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion's idea of trans­form­ing Port-of-Spain in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial cen­tre. The Gov­ern­ment has promised to ex­pand the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme as it recog­nis­es that ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion is a "ma­jor dri­ver of eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness in an in­creas­ing­ly knowl­edge-dri­ven glob­al econ­o­my."

The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­so sought to con­tin­ue the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts start­ed by its pre­de­ces­sor while adding an in­ter­est­ing twist in seek­ing to fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment of an in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion in­dus­try. The bud­get al­so pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence that the Gov­ern­ment has come to the re­al­i­sa­tion that while it can "ex­plore the de­vel­op­ment of al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy, such as so­lar and wind," there is a recog­ni­tion of the "ad­van­tages of go­ing fur­ther down­stream" of the nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain. While there was con­ti­nu­ity, the 2011 bud­get al­so con­tained some dis­con­ti­nu­ities.

While the Gov­ern­ment ap­pears to recog­nise the ad­van­tages of go­ing fur­ther down­stream, that recog­ni­tion does not ap­pear to have em­braced the alu­mini­um smelter project, which is be­ing stopped, with­out too much con­sul­ta­tion, main­ly be­cause of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion's fail­ure to ar­tic­u­late the com­pelling eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial rea­sons for the lo­ca­tion of a small, in­de­pen­dent smelter fo­cus­ing on the pro­duc­tion of mar­ket-ready prod­ucts. Hope­ful­ly, dur­ing the bud­get de­bate the Gov­ern­ment will present its plans for the su­pe­ri­or de­vel­op­ment of the south-west re­gion–plans which should in­clude an in­dus­try or in­dus­tries able to cre­ate hun­dreds of high-pay­ing in­dus­tri­al jobs. The Gov­ern­ment should al­so present, and be pre­pared to dis­cuss, its pro­pos­als on the cost of stop­ping the smelter project, in­clud­ing a pos­si­ble re­quest for re­im­burse­ment of the con­sid­er­able sums that had been ad­vanced to the project as a re­sult of the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment fi­nanc­ing and project in­sur­ance.

Giv­en the fact that the Gov­ern­ment of Chi­na, the sec­ond largest econ­o­my in the world, is so tied up in the smelter project, the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion should al­so be pre­pared for the pos­si­ble diplo­mat­ic con­se­quences of its de­ci­sion. Giv­en the pre­vail­ing un­cer­tain­ty of T&T's eco­nom­ic sce­nario, the de­ci­sion by the Gov­ern­ment to stop the $22.5 bil­lion rapid rail project af­ter the ex­pen­di­ture of $565 mil­lion for a fea­si­bil­i­ty study and de­sign plans may have been a ver­sion of not want­i­ng to throw good mon­ey af­ter bad. There are some flash­es of in­spi­ra­tion in the bud­get. The idea of pay­ing con­trac­tors what they are owed, while seem­ing­ly ob­vi­ous, elud­ed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for far too long while the com­mit­ment to use its best ef­forts in re­solv­ing the pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions is sim­ply good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice.

The Gov­ern­ment should be con­grat­u­lat­ed un­re­served­ly for its pro­mo­tion of the idea of pri­vatis­ing state-owned as­sets and of start­ing the process with Methanol Hold­ings, the CL Fi­nan­cial-owned methanol com­pa­ny. Fi­nal­ly, there is some doubt about whether the Gov­ern­ment's rev­enue pro­jec­tions are not a lit­tle too am­bi­tious and ag­gres­sive, giv­en what is hap­pen­ing in the world. With the prospect of the US econ­o­my go­ing in­to a dou­ble-dip re­ces­sion still alarm­ing­ly re­al, the de­ci­sion to pred­i­cate the coun­try's es­ti­mate of rev­enue col­lec­tion on the hope of earn­ing US$65 a bar­rel for oil and US$2.75 per mmb­tu of nat­ur­al gas seems quite un­re­al­is­tic.