With the gen­er­al elec­tion due next year, to­mor­row’s bud­get speech promis­es to be in­ter­est­ing. Nor­mal­ly one would ex­pect a pre-elec­tion bud­get speech to pro­vide some tax con­ces­sions, as the ad­min­is­tra­tion would at­tempt to de­rive some “bounce” from the pow­er of in­cum­ben­cy.

Fri­day’s re­quest by the Prime Min­is­ter at the At­lantic Twen­ty-Fifth An­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion that the pub­lic hold the fort as there are dif­fi­cult years ahead makes that im­prob­a­ble.

Colm Im­bert has been the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for two terms. Apart from Er­ic Williams, he is the on­ly fi­nance min­is­ter to have en­joyed such a long term in of­fice.

Dur­ing his tenure, he rub­bished many well-mean­ing com­men­ta­tors and their ad­vice. They were dis­missed as bi­ased, mis­in­formed, neg­a­tive, un­pa­tri­ot­ic naysay­ers.

Yet his af­fi­davit dat­ed June 3, pre­sent­ed in sup­port of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, paint­ed a dis­mal eco­nom­ic out­look, re­peat­ing al­most every cau­tion from the com­men­ta­tors he had dis­missed.

What is T&T's true eco­nom­ic po­si­tion? What are the plans to ad­dress the eco­nom­ic pit­falls that face the na­tion? Not long ago, the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that he had “saved” the en­er­gy sec­tor by mak­ing an im­por­tant in­ter­ven­tion in del­i­cate ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Fur­ther, we avoid­ed a calami­ty by clos­ing the re­fin­ery. The much-used phrase “things could have been worse” is a not-too-sub­tle ref­er­ence to IMF pre­scrip­tions.

What is the re­al­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor? And what are the plans for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, if any?

Mr Im­bert will un­doubt­ed­ly point to the re­bound in the val­ue of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, that the of­fi­cial re­serves amount to eight months of im­port cov­er, and that the rat­ing agen­cies have con­firmed the ex­ist­ing cred­it rat­ing. These con­sti­tute a base, not a plan of ac­tion for eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Any ex­pan­sion in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor re­quires in­vest­ment and for­eign ex­change, which will re­duce ex­ist­ing re­serves. A deficit is ex­pan­sion­ary, and any fis­cal ex­pan­sion will have a sim­i­lar im­pact on for­eign ex­change re­serves.

Will con­tin­ued deficits neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the coun­try’s cred­it rat­ings? In the af­fi­davit, Mr Im­bert cites de­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas vol­umes and weak prices as the caus­es of low­er en­er­gy sec­tor rev­enues.

The im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax and the de­lay in an­nounc­ing an ex­ten­sion of the dead­line are strong in­di­ca­tors that the fi­nance min­is­ter is fac­ing a rev­enue short­fall.

The pro­ject­ed $9 bil­lion bud­get deficit for 2024 was an es­ti­mate that may be ex­ceed­ed. This year’s IMF Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion re­port pro­ject­ed deficits for the next three years. If the ex­pen­di­ture pro­file re­mains un­changed, the on­ly ques­tion is the size of the deficit.

Can this ad­min­is­tra­tion look past short-term so­lu­tions that do not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress long-term prob­lems as they cre­ate more chal­lenges and un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences?

Re­brand­ing and re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of state en­ter­pris­es as cost-sav­ing mea­sures do not work. The HDC, de­spite its new of­fices and in­cor­po­rat­ed sta­tus, is the NHA with the same in­ef­fi­cien­cies and per­for­mance chal­lenges.

TTT is not per­form­ing any bet­ter than the CN­MG. TID­CO was bro­ken up in­to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent pieces, all of which are now to be re­grouped un­der one cor­po­rate um­brel­la again.

There are no easy de­ci­sions, and all in­volve some pain, even in re­duc­ing ex­pen­di­ture. Whilst eco­nom­ic growth should help to in­crease tax rev­enues, the cur­rent growth rate is in­suf­fi­cient to off­set GORTT’s ex­pen­di­ture growth.

Fis­cal dis­ci­pline and po­lit­i­cal straight talk are strange bed­fel­lows in an elec­tion year. What will to­mor­row bring?