These “Fit for pur­pose” ar­ti­cles have sought to analyse some or­gan­i­sa­tion­al is­sues that have be­dev­illed the Gov­ern­ment since in­de­pen­dence.

They have iden­ti­fied the ab­sence of a co­or­di­nat­ing func­tion at the Cab­i­net lev­el and with­in the civ­il ser­vice as a crit­i­cal weak­ness. Iden­ti­fy­ing these or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and struc­tur­al weak­ness­es im­plies that it is dif­fi­cult, if not im­pos­si­ble, for the ex­ist­ing GORTT man­age­ment struc­ture to achieve ei­ther greater ef­fi­cien­cy or more ef­fi­cient out­comes when im­ple­ment­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al weak­ness leads to weak per­for­mance or poor out­comes, which in turn leads to the ques­tion, “Who is in con­trol?” The Con­sti­tu­tion gives the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the Cab­i­net when it says in S75 “… There shall be a Cab­i­net for Trinidad and To­ba­go which shall have gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and shall be col­lec­tive­ly re­spon­si­ble there­fore to Par­lia­ment.”

The clause is all-en­com­pass­ing, and min­is­ters can­not duck re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, which they of­ten at­tempt to do by lim­it­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al role to sim­ply pro­vid­ing re­sources to crit­i­cal state agen­cies like the po­lice ser­vice or the ju­di­cia­ry.

S61 of the Con­sti­tu­tion gives Par­lia­ment the pow­er to pass leg­is­la­tion by the in­tro­duc­tion of bills. S63(2) gives the Cab­i­net the sole pow­er to in­tro­duce “mon­ey bills” ie, the pow­er to tax and spend.

These pro­vi­sions are sup­ple­ment­ed by the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act, Chap 69:01 which pro­vides for “the con­trol and man­age­ment of the pub­lic fi­nances of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” amongst oth­er things.

Per­haps the most im­por­tant “bill” that ar­tic­u­lates gov­ern­ment plans is the An­nu­al Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill, col­lo­qui­al­ly called the “bud­get,” and the bud­get speech by which it is de­liv­ered.

The bud­get is the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial plan for the next year, which is pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment at the be­gin­ning of the fi­nan­cial year. It sets out how much the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to spend and on what (hence the term ap­pro­pri­a­tion) and de­scribes the rev­enue sources to fund this ex­pen­di­ture. The Min­istry of Fi­nance con­trols the an­nu­al bud­get process. The process starts in March, and draft es­ti­mates for each min­istry or de­part­ment should be pro­vid­ed by April 30.

These rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture es­ti­mates are col­lat­ed by the Bud­get Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and must be fi­nalised in time to fa­cil­i­tate the bud­get speech by Oc­to­ber 31.

In­vari­ably, draft es­ti­mates are larg­er than the es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue and must be re­duced to match avail­able re­sources. There­fore, many ap­proved Cab­i­net notes are ex­clud­ed from the fi­nal es­ti­mates based on gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties and macro­eco­nom­ic as­sump­tions.

In re­view­ing pro­ject­ed ex­pen­di­tures by in­ter­ro­gat­ing min­istries’ ex­pen­di­ture re­quests, the Fi­nance Min­istry can al­lo­cate re­sources ac­cord­ing to pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties.

It could be ar­gued that this an­nu­al bud­get­ing process plays a co­or­di­nat­ing role, there­by mit­i­gat­ing the weak­ness­es iden­ti­fied in this se­ries of ar­ti­cles.

If there is a dis­pute, the Prime Min­is­ter can in­ter­vene and de­cide as ap­pro­pri­ate. This ar­gu­ment does not di­min­ish the lack of co­or­di­na­tion af­ter the bud­get is passed. The speech con­sists of mere words, and ac­tion mat­ters more than words.

The key point is that the pub­lic sees con­trol of the bud­getary process as the tool that fa­cil­i­tates the Cab­i­net’s “gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol.” There­fore, the Cab­i­net’s over­sight re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is not di­min­ished even if the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has sole dis­cre­tion in man­ag­ing the bud­get al­lo­cat­ed to the TTPS.

As far as the pub­lic is con­cerned, the Cab­i­net must use what­ev­er in­flu­ence it has to en­sure that the TTPS can and does spend the bil­lions al­lo­cat­ed wise­ly. More­over, to en­sure that the TTPS has the in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty to so do.

Since few ini­tia­tives can be com­plet­ed in a year, a mul­ti-year ap­proach is re­quired. As cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ed, the gov­ern­ment ac­count­ing process is based on cash and does not recog­nise a mul­ti-year ap­proach. In ad­di­tion, the pre­sen­ta­tion method is based on fi­nan­cial ac­count­ing, which records how much mon­ey is spent, not how much projects cost or will con­tin­ue to cost.

This makes it dif­fi­cult for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to bring this lev­el of de­tailed analy­sis to bear dur­ing the de­bate. This makes the bud­get speech an im­por­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tion ex­er­cise. How is progress iden­ti­fied, mea­sured and re­viewed?

These are dif­fi­cult ques­tions. Can the pub­lic analyse the per­for­mance of a gov­ern­ment on spe­cif­ic ob­jec­tives rather than broad gen­er­al­i­sa­tions? If there are changes in pri­or­i­ties, how is this in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­cat­ed, and who de­ter­mines the pri­or­i­ties?

These are crit­i­cal weak­ness­es in the cur­rent process and are mis­match­es of­ten not iden­ti­fied in time. Most min­is­ters be­come aware of the fi­nal amounts al­lo­cat­ed on­ly a few hours be­fore the bud­get speech is pre­sent­ed.

The glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing rapid­ly and de­mands strate­gic think­ing and care­ful repo­si­tion­ing. Re­sources have al­ways been scarce but have be­come more so as the oil and gas re­serves di­min­ish.

Wast­ed re­sources can nev­er be re­cov­ered. All sys­tems must be re­viewed pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly to en­sure that they are ap­pro­pri­ate to the cur­rent re­al­i­ties.

If they are not and ap­pro­pri­ate ad­just­ments are not made in a time­ly man­ner, then re­sources will con­tin­ue to be wast­ed ei­ther be­cause they are mis­al­lo­cat­ed or used in­ad­e­quate­ly.

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness