As Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert gets ready to present his ninth bud­get 13 days from to­day, it is ap­pro­pri­ate to look back at the eight pre­vi­ous fis­cal pack­ages, both for an as­sess­ment of his per­for­mance so far, and for clues about the up­com­ing 2024 Bud­get.

The 2016 Bud­get, which was de­liv­ered on Oc­to­ber 5, 2015, less than a month af­ter the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) was re­turned to of­fice, start­ed off at $63 bil­lion, in­clud­ing the $5 bil­lion in back­pay owed to pub­lic ser­vants. That year's bud­get was even­tu­al­ly re­duced to $52.9 bil­lion, ex­clud­ing the back­pay.

Mr Im­bert main­tained ex­pen­di­ture in the vicin­i­ty of $50 bil­lion be­tween the 2017 and 2021 fis­cal years, be­fore push­ing it to $54 bil­lion in 2022 and an es­ti­mat­ed $61.5 bil­lion for 2023.

While Mr Im­bert has done a re­mark­able job in cut­ting Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture, he has been much less suc­cess­ful in dri­ving mea­sures aimed at in­creas­ing the Gov­ern­ment's rev­enue and spurring sus­tain­able en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy growth.

In the 2016 Bud­get, Mr Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment would have tak­en steps to amend cer­tain leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sions to im­ple­ment the ex­ist­ing Prop­er­ty Tax Act 2009, "with a view to hav­ing a fair and eq­ui­table prop­er­ty tax regime in place by Jan­u­ary 1, 2016." T&T is still wait­ing for word from the Gov­ern­ment on whether it in­tends to im­ple­ment ful­ly the prop­er­ty tax regime.

In the 2016 Bud­get as well, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance pro­posed to fast-track the pas­sage of the Gam­bling (Gam­ing and Bet­ting) Con­trol Bill 2015. He promised to put a suit­able reg­u­la­to­ry regime with ap­pro­pri­ate con­trols to ad­dress chron­ic gam­blers by 2016. Al­though a board for the Gam­bling Con­trol Com­mis­sion was ap­point­ed in March 2022, there is lit­tle ev­i­dence that board is any clos­er to putting "a suit­able reg­u­la­to­ry regime," in place to col­lect tax­es from casi­nos and slot ma­chines.

Al­most eight years ago, Mr Im­bert said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) would be in place by the end of the new fis­cal year. While the board of the Au­thor­i­ty was ap­point­ed in Ju­ly 2022, it is yet to dri­ve the amal­ga­ma­tion of the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, which was pre­dict­ed to gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al rev­enue es­ti­mat­ed at 5 per cent of GDP or an ad­di­tion­al $8 bil­lion. This mat­ter has, per­haps, been de­layed by a le­gal chal­lenge.

Mr Im­bert al­so said the Min­istry of Fi­nance was "ad­vanc­ing work on the in­tro­duc­tion of trans­fer pric­ing leg­is­la­tion," which rep­re­sent­ed "a sig­nif­i­cant leak­age in our rev­enue stream."

Re­gard­ing the dri­ve to broad­en T&T's rev­enue-rais­ing in­dus­tries, near­ly eight years ago, Mr Im­bert said: "There is al­so wide­spread agree­ment that, with the un­cer­tain­ties and chal­lenges fac­ing our en­er­gy sec­tor, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion has be­come an ur­gent pri­or­i­ty."

His two pro­pos­als then were the de­vel­op­ment of a mar­itime main­te­nance fa­cil­i­ty, which was meant to be a hub for ma­jor ship-re­pair and ship-build­ing with­in the Cari­com re­gion, and a thriv­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (IFC) in Port-of-Spain that "could pro­vide syn­er­gies for the ex­pan­sion of free zone man­u­fac­tur­ing and trans-ship­ment ac­tiv­i­ties and for tourism." The mar­itime fa­cil­i­ty is still at the Re­quest or Pro­pos­als stage, while the IFC has been re­fash­ioned to dri­ve dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

Had the Gov­ern­ment moved with alacrity to in­tro­duce these mea­sures in the last eight years, it is safe to say that T&T would have been in a much bet­ter place in terms of its rev­enue gen­er­a­tion than it is to­day.