Can T&T af­ford an­oth­er five years with Colm Im­bert as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance?

This must be one of the ques­tion that the elec­torate must con­sid­er and for which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley must tell the coun­try. We have had a five-year pe­ri­od in which the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has failed to in­spire con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my and presided over five years of con­sec­u­tive de­cline.

To be sure, Min­is­ter Im­bert met a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion and there are many com­men­ta­tors who have on­ly found their voic­es af­ter 2015 as they re­mained silent when the last gov­ern­ment wast­ed bil­lions of dol­lars and bal­looned the trans­fers and sub­si­dies bill, while get­ting lit­tle or no eco­nom­ic growth in re­turn.

Up­on as­sum­ing the man­tle for steer­ing the coun­try out of a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion, to a new and sus­tain­able path, Min­is­ter Im­bert met an econ­o­my that—ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank— had de­clined by 0.6 per cent in 2015. This de­cline came even af­ter the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had spent a record $63 bil­lion in 2015 even as crude prices had col­lapsed and nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and prices were on their way down.

The last ad­min­is­tra­tion tried to spend its way back in­to gov­ern­ment with ma­jor con­struc­tion projects and even give­aways. Re­mem­ber the short lived ba­by grant? So, it was al­ways go­ing to be a chal­leng­ing as­sign­ment for the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin North East.

The min­is­ter al­so had some buffers in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund that was now near­ing US$6 bil­lion, and healthy re­serves in the Cen­tral Bank. But he al­so in­her­it­ed an econ­o­my that was less com­pet­i­tive, had run deficits since 2008 and whose ex­pen­di­ture pro­file was just not sus­tain­able.

The coun­try’s main source of rev­enue, the en­er­gy sec­tor, was in cri­sis and while the last gov­ern­ment was able to have a suc­cess­ful deep-wa­ter bid round it had gen­er­al­ly per­formed poor­ly in its man­age­ment of this im­por­tant sec­tor.

Let’s look at the num­bers.

When the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship came in­to pow­er in May 2010 the av­er­age month­ly pro­duc­tion was 101,909. By the time they left in 2015, the av­er­age pro­duc­tion for that year was 78,656 bar­rels of oil per day. This means crude pro­duc­tion un­der the PP de­clined by al­most 23 per cent.

The nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion for 2010 av­er­aged 4.3 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day. By 2015 it was av­er­ag­ing 3.83 bcf/d or a fall of about 500mm­scf/d or 11 per cent. So the num­bers are clear!

You add to this the raid­ing of the NCG of bil­lions of dol­lars, us­ing it for po­lit­i­cal gain by hav­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion spend hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on build­ing grounds in UNC-con­trolled con­stituen­cies, a wast wa­ter treat­ment plant for WASA even as the then CEO of NGC was al­so chair­man of WASA, and you get the stench of what Mr Im­bert met.

From the time Dr Row­ley ap­point­ed Im­bert as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance it raised eye­brows. Af­ter all he had no for­mal train­ing in fi­nance or eco­nom­ics and no track-record of man­ag­ing a busi­ness, even though he had owned a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny.

The Prime Min­is­ter dis­missed the con­cerns say­ing the coun­try had econ­o­mists run­ning its af­fairs and still end­ed up in a bad state. Not a very sound rea­son but the ap­point­ment but, as with every­thing and every­one else, Im­bert de­served a chance.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was able to achieve two ma­jor things. He was able to sta­bilise the econ­o­my, al­beit at a low­er lev­el of GDP than he met it and he was able to cut ex­pen­di­ture with­out send­ing home work­ers and caus­ing ri­ots in the streets. Re­mem­ber how he boast­ed that he had raised the price of fu­el three times and yet no one ri­ot­ed and he felt that he would raise it again. Boast­ing with a smirk on his face about how he was able to in­flict pain on the pop­u­la­tion.

The chal­lenge with Mr Im­bert and why re­gard­less to which par­ty comes in­to pow­er is that the coun­try can­not af­ford an­oth­er five more years of this. He has done noth­ing to grow this econ­o­my. He has not shown any in­ter­est or imag­i­na­tion on how this coun­try can move for­ward.

Im­bert on Fri­day pre­sent­ed his last mid-year re­view and, as has now be­come par de course, the re­sponse has been one of con­cern for the au­then­tic­i­ty of the num­bers.

So much time has to be spent on fact-check­ing Mr Im­bert’s num­bers and state­ments—which he of­ten makes as mat­ter of fact and are noth­ing short of mis­in­for­ma­tion—that one can some­times lose fo­cus of the big pic­ture.

Take, for ex­am­ple, his in­sis­tence on the nat­ur­al gas num­bers for 2019 to av­er­age 3.8 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day. This col­umn and oth­er com­men­ta­tors chal­lenged Min­is­ter Im­bert on the num­bers. As is his style, he dis­missed it and of course the re­view of the econ­o­my then showed the ex­tent to which the truth was bent.

It is why these growth fore­cast can­not be trust­ed and when we have come to the stage where we can no longer be­lieve the min­is­ter’s num­bers it must be ei­ther he has poor fore­cast­ing or he is def­i­nite­ly show­ing him­self to mis­s­peak all too of­ten.

It should have been clear to the Prime Min­is­ter at least two years ago that he need­ed to find a new Fi­nance Min­is­ter. The coun­try need­ed some­one who could build coali­tion with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Some­one who saw this econ­o­my as one that en­cour­aged free en­ter­prise and was not a cen­tral­ly con­trolled and man­aged econ­o­my.

The Gov­ern­ment has a ma­jor role to play, es­pe­cial­ly to en­sure that mar­ket dis­tor­tion does not leave the most vul­ner­a­ble at the mer­cy of free en­ter­prise. But, in so do­ing, gov­ern­ment can­not crowd-out the pri­vate sec­tor.

Where is the fo­cus on new growth? This gov­ern­ment is the first in the last 40 years to have gone through its five years in of­fice and not at­tract a sin­gle ma­jor project. It has promised a lot like the alu­mini­um projects or the Chi­nese backed in­dus­tri­al park and has failed to de­liv­er.

Min­is­ter Im­bert has failed to tack­le big is­sues like pen­sion re­form so des­per­ate­ly need­ed in an age­ing so­ci­ety.

He has not giv­en us sense that he would come clean with the pop­u­la­tion and he has failed to deal with the cen­tral chal­lenges of the coun­try.

What we need is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound Fi­nance Min­is­ter, one with ideas of how we can build a sus­tain­able econ­o­my and some­one who sees the in­tegri­ty of the num­bers as be­ing im­por­tant.

What we need is a new Fi­nance Min­is­ter!