Dr Bhoe Tewarie

The new Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished Dave Tan­coo firm­ly as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance of Trinidad and To­ba­go on Mon­day. The con­text of this first Bud­get af­ter elec­toral change made it a defin­ing mo­ment for him and Tan­coo de­fined him­self as a dif­fer­ent kind of Fi­nance min­is­ter.

De­spite poor cus­to­di­an­ship, but be­cause of pres­ence, com­mand, ex­pe­ri­ence, ar­ro­gant self-con­fi­dence and sheer gump­tion, Colm Im­bert was a hard act to fol­low.

Min­is­ter Tan­coo rose to the oc­ca­sion - in his grasp of the coun­try’s for­mi­da­ble chal­lenges, in the struc­ture of his pre­sen­ta­tion, in con­tent, in his roll-out of pol­i­cy po­si­tions and fis­cal mea­sures, and in the po­lit­i­cal spin of his pre­sen­ta­tion, which sought to po­si­tion the last gov­ern­ment as ten years of woe bet­ter gone than re­mem­bered, and a new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment, pro-peo­ple, pro-coun­try, pro-com­pas­sion but, not afraid of hard de­ci­sions nor cre­ativ­i­ty.

This is a Bud­get that has Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sin­cere in­ten­tions of keep­ing faith with the peo­ple writ­ten all over it - car­ing for the poor, the ex­clud­ed, women, chil­dren, pen­sion­ers, dif­fer­ent­ly abled, be­ing mind­ful of youth. The PM’s com­mit­ment to work­ers and her al­liance with labour as leader of the UNC al­so res­onat­ed.

But the Prime Min­is­ter al­so showed con­sid­er­able re­straint, giv­en her char­i­ta­ble dis­po­si­tion, in lim­it­ing her give aways and pop­ulist mea­sures, which would be re­as­sur­ing to those who un­der­stand that our coun­try is be­tween a rock and a hard place, that na­tion­al in­come is a scarce com­mod­i­ty, reck­less spend­ing a mark of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and that good gov­er­nance and pru­dent man­age­ment of T&T’s fi­nan­cial af­fairs are ab­solute ne­ces­si­ties now. In this, the PM demon­strat­ed re­spect for good gov­er­nance.

The Gov­ern­ment came through well in re­solv­ing the ten­sion be­tween elec­tion promis­es, man­i­festo pledges, eco­nom­ic im­per­a­tives in the con­text of re­al fi­nan­cial con­straints and loss of GDP and jobs, in re­spon­sive­ness to sug­ges­tions of stake­hold­ers and in calm­ing the anx­i­ety lev­el of the pop­u­la­tion.

The elec­torate too, must now feel vin­di­cat­ed. Those who vot­ed (54%) and those who stayed at home (46%) will be af­fect­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. Those who vot­ed were those who were clear in their minds that they want­ed ei­ther the UNC (29%) or the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) (23%) or the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (2%). Those who stayed at home were ei­ther those who want­ed to protest against their par­ty or those who con­sid­ered all po­lit­i­cal par­ties not de­serv­ing of their vote in 2025.

Those who vot­ed for the UNC Coali­tion of In­ter­ests would feel vin­di­cat­ed by the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, its dis­po­si­tion and its mea­sures, even if they might like some things and not oth­ers. Those who stayed home in protest against the PNM for dis­liked poli­cies or bad pol­i­tics would al­so feel vin­di­cat­ed that they made change pos­si­ble for Trinidad and To­ba­go to move for­ward.

But for those who might have be­come frus­trat­ed with both po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­deed, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty sys­tem it­self, this Bud­get would have gen­er­at­ed some in­ter­est and at­tract­ed some hope­ful at­ten­tion. These cit­i­zens will now mon­i­tor gov­er­nance in a less dis­in­ter­est­ed way and may inch to greater en­gage­ment, which could on­ly be good for democ­ra­cy.

The theme of the bud­get was “T&T First.” The Fi­nance Min­is­ter sought to il­lus­trate this by tack­ling the pen­sions is­sue head-on, and he iden­ti­fied di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion pri­or­i­ties, pri­vate sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion to boost in­vest­ment and high­light­ed the AI thrust to meet the fu­ture.

The rest of the theme iden­ti­fied “build­ing eco­nom­ic fair­ness” as a key com­mit­ment and “ac­count­able fis­cal poli­cies” as an­oth­er.

The fair­ness is­sue one can see in the sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in Su­per gaso­lene, the pro­tec­tion and en­hance­ment of so­cial wel­fare ben­e­fits, as well as tax­es which have by­passed the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens and fo­cused on banks, in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, and prop­er­ty own­er­ship for rentals. This prop­er­ty tax is for in­come-gen­er­at­ing prop­er­ties and not for home own­er­ship. The sales tax will af­fect each pur­chase.

On ac­count­abil­i­ty, I will on­ly say that the coun­try looks for­ward hope­ful­ly to an era of ac­count­able gov­ern­ment and good gov­er­nance and that the gen­er­ous al­lo­ca­tion to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly de­mands the high­est lev­el of ac­count­abil­i­ty from To­ba­go lead­er­ship and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er, re­al­is­ing the pro­ject­ed rev­enue re­mains a for­mi­da­ble prob­lem. Co­or­di­na­tion, syn­er­gy, im­ple­men­ta­tion and achieve­ment of in­tend­ed re­sults are deep chal­lenges. Re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture will in­crease. Ex­port-fo­cused non-en­er­gy in­vest­ments high­er up the val­ue chain and the ab­sorp­tion and de­ploy­ment of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence all re­quire lead­er­ship, team­work, and dili­gent man­age­ment and su­per­vi­sion, dri­ven to de­liv­ery of re­sults.

On the crime front, progress has been made un­der con­di­tions of a State of Emer­gency. A post-SoE ca­pac­i­ty for con­tain­ment and re­duc­tion needs form and sub­stance for this so­ci­ety-defin­ing is­sue.