Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo can be cred­it­ed for ar­tic­u­lat­ing a few pos­i­tives in his Mid-year Bud­get Re­view pre­sen­ta­tion to the House on Wednes­day. Those points come from his stat­ed pre­lim­i­nary in­ten­tions to at­tempt a trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my from be­ing in what he claimed to be a “crashed” state, due to the poli­cies of suc­ceed­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ments.

Min­is­ter Tan­coo sig­nalled that Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands the need to broad­en the econ­o­my from its al­most com­plete de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor. The in­ten­tion, as he ar­tic­u­lat­ed it, will be to en­able T&T to earn for­eign ex­change out­side of en­er­gy and to im­ple­ment ini­tia­tives to en­cour­age en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter al­so promised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of grant­i­ng “tax ex­emp­tions and tax cred­its” to ex­porters who earn sur­plus to their spend­ing of forex to cre­ate ex­port prod­ucts and ser­vices.

One such in­tend­ed ini­tia­tive is to al­low in­vestors-pro­duc­ers who earn forex from their pro­duc­tion bases to re­tain a por­tion of it for “rein­vest­ment and op­er­a­tional ex­pan­sion.” He al­so iden­ti­fied the long-stand­ing need to “ex­pand our in­ter­na­tion­al trade rep­re­sen­ta­tion.” It’s an ini­tia­tive which is in­ter­pret­ed to mean hav­ing ex­pert trade fa­cil­i­ta­tors in T&T’s em­bassies and high com­mis­sions abroad.

It must be not­ed that such an ap­pre­ci­a­tion, as ex­pressed by the min­is­ter, is one which has been flagged by near­ly every gov­ern­ment in the post-in­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od. The trou­ble has been that on­ly in a few in­stances and in spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances, such as the pro­duc­tion and ex­port of a range of petro­chem­i­cals, all of the pre­ced­ing gov­ern­ments have not, in re­al­i­ty, pur­sued what has be­come the clichéd “di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

Giv­en the short time frame that the Gov­ern­ment has been in of­fice and the min­is­ter’s state­ment that the pur­pose of the Mid-term Bud­get Re­view is to achieve the ad­di­tion­al $3.1 bil­lion “need­ed to pay bills” in­curred by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, Min­is­ter Tan­coo must be giv­en some lee­way.

Hope­ful­ly, but per­haps not like­ly, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, on be­half of the Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment, has gone some dis­tance in sat­is­fy­ing the need to ex­co­ri­ate the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment for al­leged gross mis­man­age­ment of the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety.

That hav­ing been done, which has be­come stan­dard prac­tice when a new gov­ern­ment re­places its pre­de­ces­sor, un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is nev­er the sat­is­fac­tion of hav­ing al­leged per­pe­tra­tors ac­cused of such acts tak­en to court, found guilty and in­car­cer­at­ed for their crimes against the peo­ple.

The ex­pec­ta­tion now is for the Gov­ern­ment, hav­ing passed through what has be­come some­thing of a “rite of pas­sage,” to pos­i­tive­ly take ac­tion to ini­ti­ate the trans­for­ma­tion the coun­try needs, mi­nus the bac­cha­nal and emp­ty talk.

The ex­pan­sive and de­fin­i­tive plans which the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, in op­po­si­tion, al­ways boast­ed of hav­ing, must now be pre­sent­ed to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Such a pre­sen­ta­tion must be fol­lowed by pro­grammes and im­ple­men­ta­tion out­lines.

Over the next few months in the ap­proach to the de­vel­op­ment and pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2026 Bud­get state­ment, there must, there­fore, be mean­ing­ful and wide­spread con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ments of the so­ci­ety.