As the coun­try heads clos­er to­wards the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, the econ­o­my for vot­ers will be at the fore­front; be it the wor­ry­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, in­creas­ing price of food items, the un­cer­tain­ty of jobs, for­eign ex­change chal­lenges and al­so the pay­ing of prop­er­ty tax.

The Busi­ness Guardian spoke to sev­er­al econ­o­mists to get their per­spec­tive on how the econ­o­my is viewed by vot­ers and how these fac­tors can in­flu­ence their de­ci­sion to ush­er in a new gov­ern­ment.

De­vel­op­men­tal econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said while po­lit­i­cal par­ties may of­fer bold promis­es, most vot­ers would ask a sin­gle, fun­da­men­tal ques­tion.

“Who can im­prove my life - not just fi­nan­cial­ly, but by mak­ing me feel safe and se­cure in my own coun­try? In­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to the state of the econ­o­my is the ques­tion of ‘safe­ty’ with a grow­ing con­cern for crime and its eco­nom­ic cost. These dual is­sues – per­son­al well-be­ing and phys­i­cal safe­ty - will like­ly be de­ci­sive fac­tors at the polls,” she ex­plained.

Attzs not­ed that the cost of liv­ing has risen sharply, and house­holds are squeezed by food in­fla­tion and dis­rupt­ed glob­al sup­ply chains, while small busi­ness­es still strug­gle with red tape, lim­it­ed ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing and scarce for­eign ex­change.

For many en­tre­pre­neurs and work­ing-class fam­i­lies, she said, eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery still feels out of reach and there al­so is the is­sue of youth un­em­ploy­ment, which is still an un­der­ad­dressed cri­sis.

An­oth­er ex­am­ple of how votes can swing Attzs said, was with the mil­len­ni­als and Gen Z pop­u­la­tion which she said are es­pe­cial­ly ea­ger for clear com­mit­ments, such as what were the con­crete op­por­tu­ni­ties that would be avail­able for them and how would skill de­vel­op­ment, in­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship be en­cour­aged be­yond tra­di­tion­al sec­tors.

Attzs added that oth­er vot­ers want an­swers to tough ques­tions such as would the econ­o­my grow and would the vul­ner­a­ble be pro­tect­ed.

Stat­ing that this elec­tion pre­sent­ed a cru­cial op­por­tu­ni­ty for cit­i­zens to deep­en their un­der­stand­ing of the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty and in the re­main­ing days lead­ing up de­mand clear, trans­par­ent plans from po­lit­i­cal lead­ers about the road ahead so that ex­pec­ta­tions are man­aged mov­ing for­ward.

Ze­ro­ing in on the is­sue, econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Patrick Wat­son said vot­ers would eval­u­ate their op­tions based on their per­son­al eco­nom­ic well-be­ing, adding that the for­eign ex­change short­age would al­so be a ma­jor fac­tor es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that the un­avail­abil­i­ty of US cur­ren­cy to con­duct very ba­sic things pre­sent­ed se­ri­ous chal­lenges.

“They are see­ing that the lit­tle things they are ac­cus­tomed to are seem­ing­ly im­pos­si­ble. Cit­i­zens are see­ing prices ris­ing, near­ly every month,” he out­lined.

Wat­son stat­ed that amongst the vot­ers, many re­mained un­hap­py with how the crime sit­u­a­tion was be­ing dealt with, not­ing this would al­so be fac­tored in them mak­ing their re­spec­tive choic­es.

He al­so spoke about the four per cent of­fered to pub­lic ser­vants which could be an­oth­er de­cid­ing el­e­ment in the vot­ing process.

“The for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ac­cept­ed the salary in­crease pro­posed by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) last No­vem­ber. The in­crease was in thou­sands, but yet still this ad­min­is­tra­tion is hell-bent on of­fer­ing four per cent to the pub­lic ser­vant,” Wat­son said.

Giv­ing his in­put econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon al­so agreed vot­ers would eval­u­ate their op­tions based on their per­son­al eco­nom­ic well-be­ing, as he ex­plained this was called “pock­et­book vot­ing.”

For ex­am­ple, Ar­joon said, vot­ers would con­sid­er how they have been cop­ing with the cost of liv­ing es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to food.

“Have their wages been high enough to cov­er the spike in liv­ing costs and still al­low them to save?

“The Cen­tral Bank da­ta shows that av­er­age food prices have risen by more than 43 per cent in the last nine years, with bread ris­ing by 40 per cent, milk, cheese and eggs ris­ing by 37 per cent, and veg­eta­bles by 63 per cent,” Ar­joon added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said many of the younger pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly first-time vot­ers would al­so con­sid­er fac­tors like the job mar­ket and whether there are lu­cra­tive jobs avail­able af­ter they grad­u­ate uni­ver­si­ty.

“But what is equal­ly im­por­tant is which par­ty has the bet­ter strate­gies and bet­ter ex­per­tise to rec­ti­fy the is­sues that are cur­rent­ly faced – which one can re­al­is­ti­cal­ly right the eco­nom­ic wrongs,” he said.

Ar­joon fur­ther stat­ed that be­yond their cir­cum­stances, the out­come of the elec­tions could sig­nal vot­ers’ per­cep­tions about the over­all na­tion­al eco­nom­ic per­for­mance.

He not­ed the econ­o­my de­clined by 17.6 per cent since 2015 and vot­ers would gauge the per­for­mance of the in­cum­bent by look­ing at the over­all lev­els of un­em­ploy­ment and job cre­ation, in­fla­tion as well as over­all rev­enue earn­ings.

“How well has the State been pro­vid­ing ba­sic ser­vices like health­care, wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty, and school­ing? Has the State been man­ag­ing our rev­enue from earn­ings re­spon­si­bly? If a gov­ern­ment’s tenure co­in­cides with more favourable eco­nom­ic out­comes, ris­ing in­comes, and sta­ble prices, the bet­ter their odds of be­ing re-elect­ed,” Ar­joon said.

He not­ed that a large seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion was very well in­formed and at­tuned with eco­nom­ic man­age­ment, say­ing that many un­der­stood fis­cal and ex­change rate pol­i­cy and trade pol­i­cy.

As such he said many would be able to dis­cern for them­selves whether some of the nar­ra­tives of both po­lit­i­cal par­ties were re­al­is­tic, or whether they are “pie in the sky.”

Ar­joon high­light­ed that vot­ers may, there­fore, not be eas­i­ly swayed by lofty promis­es, hence ma­jor par­ties would do well to craft pro­pos­als that would not on­ly bet­ter their qual­i­ty of life but were al­so re­al­is­tic and could stand up to scruti­ny.

Role of the econ­o­my in the elec­tion

Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan who al­so wad­ed in on the sit­u­a­tion said the role of the econ­o­my in this elec­tion was “un­for­tu­nate­ly ab­sent” from the cam­paign plat­forms so far.

She not­ed that for in­stance, the PNM has promised to re­move tax­es on re­tired pub­lic ser­vants’ pen­sions, dou­ble the num­ber of food cards dis­trib­uted, and re­move VAT on all school uni­forms to as­sist par­ents, while the UNC in turn has promised to re­move prop­er­ty tax, re­in­state lap­tops and start pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at 10 per cent.

“Each at­tempt­ing to dom­i­nate in the hand­out game. The thing is, all these things cost mon­ey, So, in­di­rect­ly they are eco­nom­ic. Giv­en that mon­ey is a scarce re­source in the pub­lic purse at this time, these promis­es, though nice sound­ing to the po­ten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries, are wor­ry­ing to us econ­o­mists when spo­ken in a vac­u­um,” Sage­wan said.

As the cam­paign swing in­to full gear, she in­di­cat­ed that the pop­u­la­tion need­ed to be hear­ing from all sides, and what was the over­ar­ch­ing vi­sion for T&T.

“How is the en­er­gy sec­tor to be re­vi­talised and repo­si­tioned for growth and in­creased forex earn­ing? What is the non-en­er­gy ex­port-dri­ven di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy in the con­text of cli­mate change im­per­a­tives? How is the brain drain of pro­fes­sion­als (young and ma­ture) to be quelled? Once the an­swers to these ques­tions are re­al­is­tic, some of the promis­es can be de­liv­ered with­out plac­ing un­due strain on the econ­o­my, but on­ly af­ter the econ­o­my is placed on a strong eco­nom­ic foot­ing,” she ex­plained.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, shared sim­i­lar views and al­so stressed that the forex crunch would be a ma­jor fac­tor for most “as this prob­lem on­ly ex­ist­ed in this ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Out­lin­ing key points vot­ers would bear in mind when cast­ing their bal­lot Ram­per­sad out­lined these in­clud­ed trans­porta­tion, food, fu­el, hous­ing, crime, prop­er­ty tax, and the un­em­ploy­ment of youths, not­ing that stu­dents grad­u­at­ed by the thou­sands and con­tin­ue to re­main job­less.