What stood out most about Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day was its length — more than five hours, most of it spent de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies.

In his tenth bud­get, which he had warned in ad­vance would be lengthy, Min­is­ter Im­bert went in­to some de­tail on ef­forts he said are on­go­ing to achieve “a re­silient bud­get that can with­stand ex­ter­nal shocks.”

There were nu­mer­ous ref­er­ences to the strain placed on the coun­try’s re­sources dur­ing the acute phase of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a theme con­tin­ued from Mr Im­bert’s past two bud­gets.

The pre­sen­ta­tion was pref­aced by the usu­al re­minders about geo-po­lit­i­cal ten­sions and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ship­ping con­straints that are af­fect­ing the cost of sea freight.

These chal­leng­ing glob­al sce­nar­ios were used by the min­is­ter to re­in­force his claims of pru­dent fis­cal man­age­ment — an­oth­er re­cur­ring theme from bud­gets past — and to high­light the growth that has been tak­ing place.

With an elec­tion due next year, there was a ramp­ing up of the pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic news, in­clud­ing three con­sec­u­tive years of growth, a drop in the in­fla­tion rate and the pos­i­tive per­for­mance in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

It helped that a few months ear­li­er, in its June 2024 re­port on the T&T econ­o­my, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) had fore­cast a grad­ual and sus­tained re­cov­ery.

There were no ob­vi­ous belt-tight­en­ing mea­sures. The roll-out of prop­er­ty tax is on­go­ing and Min­is­ter Im­bert did not pro­vide any de­fin­i­tive word on the ex­pect­ed hike in elec­tric­i­ty rates.

How­ev­er, there were plen­ty of bud­get good­ies for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, in­clud­ing an in­crease in their min­i­mum wage from $20.50 to $22.50 an hour for MTS, URP and Cepep work­ers. There was al­so the of­fer of a five per cent wage in­crease for 2020-2022 and back­pay by year-end if new agree­ments are met.

The min­is­ter al­so at­tempt­ed to head off the usu­al com­plaints from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) by point­ing out that the is­land’s to­tal al­lo­ca­tion of $2.599 bil­lion is an in­crease over 2024, as well as a 4.35 per cent slice of the na­tion­al bud­get. In ed­u­ca­tion, which gets one of the largest al­lo­ca­tions, the pro­posed in­tro­duc­tion of e-text­books should of­fer some mea­sure of fi­nan­cial re­lief to fam­i­lies strug­gling with the cost of school sup­plies.

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, a sore point giv­en the coun­try’s wors­en­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, was ad­dressed with promis­es of sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to boost bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of air­craft, off­shore pa­trol ves­sels, drones and 2,000 new ve­hi­cles for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

With these and many of the oth­er mea­sures in the $59.7 bil­lion fis­cal pack­age, the dev­il is like­ly to be in the de­tails.

Mod­est eco­nom­ic growth did not mit­i­gate the ef­fects of low oil and gas prices and de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor, so once again the coun­try is sad­dled with a bud­get deficit of $5.5 bil­lion. Mr Im­bert was quick to point out it is the norm rather than the ex­cep­tion, as deficit bud­gets were al­so de­liv­ered dur­ing the UNC’s terms in of­fice.

Mr Im­bert took time to put a great deal of pos­i­tive spin on his pre­sen­ta­tion, but still had to ex­er­cise some re­straint with the mea­sures he an­nounced.

In terms of the fis­cal year ahead, there are still many un­knowns. The pic­ture should be­come clear­er when the bud­get de­bate be­gins on Fri­day.