If a Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive has been Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for nine years and he is de­liv­er­ing what might prob­a­bly be his last bud­get be­fore the next gen­er­al elec­tion, one would hope that as min­is­ter, he would have some kind of philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tive from which to ap­proach his bud­getary pre­sen­ta­tion; be­cause he might want cit­i­zens to con­tex­tu­al­ly un­der­stand, for in­stance, why the re­al­i­ty of what they are liv­ing is what it is.

A min­is­ter in this sit­u­a­tion might take the view that his gov­ern­ment has done well and that the coun­try is in a good place, and what the coun­try needs is more of the same and that the gov­ern­ment needs more time. All that is then left for such a min­is­ter to do is for him to in­di­cate that the gov­ern­ment would be car­ry­ing on with busi­ness as usu­al.

But Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had ad­vised a few days be­fore the Bud­get read­ing, that at least the next three years are go­ing to be tough. This had al­so been clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed by many com­men­ta­tors in the pub­lic space be­fore, and anx­i­ety was al­ready ev­i­dent in the con­scious­ness, ar­tic­u­la­tion and be­hav­iour of the cit­i­zen­ry. So, the Prime Min­is­ter’s ac­knowl­edge­ment of a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge was im­por­tant, even if late.

The min­is­ter him­self, in the last bud­get, had al­so sig­nalled the nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion drop to 2.5 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day, which con­se­quent­ly means a sig­nif­i­cant an­nu­al drop in rev­enue. So one might have thought that the min­is­ter would give some per­spec­tive on how, for the wel­fare of a coun­try and peo­ple, the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to steer us through these tougher times, when the im­me­di­ate, stress­ful chal­lenge is to main­tain our stan­dard of liv­ing and qual­i­ty of life in the face of falling rev­enues, and to at­tract ex­port fo­cused in­vest­ment, to gen­er­ate jobs, de­cent work­er in­comes and for­eign ex­change. Prop­er­ty tax, Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty and tax amnesty may im­prove rev­enue, but not jobs, in­comes or forex. Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert did not shed any light be­yond this.

And every­one knows we are liv­ing through some rough years now. House­hold in­comes can­not keep up with ba­sic ex­pen­di­ture on food, hous­ing and util­i­ty costs. Of­fi­cial in­fla­tion num­bers are un­der­mined by the cash­less trau­ma of day-to-day liv­ing by hun­dreds of thou­sands. So, the min­is­ter was hard-pressed to say that every­thing is fine and that we will press on with busi­ness as usu­al. But, by and large, that is what he did. “Stead­fast and Res­olute: Forg­ing Path­ways to Pros­per­i­ty” was his bud­get theme. Ba­si­cal­ly, the min­is­ter’s thrust seems to be that the Gov­ern­ment has done what it has done, is mak­ing no apolo­gies, and is press­ing on with what it sees as the busi­ness at hand. Two dol­lars more per hour for State work­ers, a maths in­ter­ven­tion in 26 schools, dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy for stu­dents. Press on.

Her­itage prof­its and tax­es to Gov­ern­ment do not change the price of fu­el at the pump nor the in­abil­i­ty of low wage earn­ers, un­em­ployed and taxi dri­vers to cope.

Nor do they pro­vide forex to buy the feed­stock.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance could have al­so tak­en the view that, as a coun­try, T&T has done all right but that we have some pe­cu­liar chal­lenges, and to meet such chal­lenges, we need to change course and head in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion or to treat par­tic­u­lar things with a greater sense of ur­gency, and iden­ti­fy what those are and what the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to do.

Crime, mur­ders and guns for in­stance. By the min­is­ter’s own ad­mis­sion, a lot of mon­ey has been spent on the TTPS, $28 bil­lion over ten years, and strong al­lo­ca­tions are go­ing to be made again this year. But clear­ly, al­lo­ca­tions and spend­ing are not what makes the dif­fer­ence to mur­ders, gun and crime re­duc­tion. What is the pol­i­cy shift and the op­er­a­tions strat­e­gy that would make the dif­fer­ence?

A min­is­ter in this sit­u­a­tion would nev­er take the view that as a gov­ern­ment, they did not man­age well; or that the gov­ern­ment, has, in fact, failed on many counts. No min­is­ter would want to ex­plain rea­sons for fail­ure or lack of re­sults. That would be like singing your swan­song. So suc­cess­es are all that you ad­mit as you an­nounce more ini­tia­tives.

From this per­spec­tive, the first five years of bud­gets were val­i­dat­ed by the 2020 elec­tion. This sec­ond five will be val­i­dat­ed or re­ject­ed in the 2025 elec­tion. Stead­fast and res­olute. That is just the way it is. In the democ­ra­cy that we are strug­gling to cre­ate, noth­ing much mat­ters in be­tween.