Mark Lyn­der­say

In his sec­ond bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert played again to the cheap seats, of­fer­ing min­i­mal fis­cal dings and ten­ta­tive benev­o­lence to cit­i­zens liv­ing on the mon­e­tary mar­gins of so­ci­ety.

There's a lot in the bud­get that seeks to soft­en the im­pact of sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced pe­tro­le­um in­come on the poor and low­er mid­dle-class in T&T, but it's hard to see how any­thing in the bud­get for 2016/2017 is go­ing to seed the in­ven­tive star­tups need­ed for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

As one might ex­pect from this col­umn, I hold a strong brief in sup­port of tech­nol­o­gy's role in ac­cel­er­at­ing ini­tia­tives that will di­ver­si­fy and am­pli­fy in­come out­side of oil and gas.

The fo­cus in the main bud­get state­ment un­der the head­ing ICT sought to yoke an am­bi­tion to build "a knowl­edge-based and well-con­nect­ed so­ci­ety as a foun­da­tion for in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty" to the rather ten­ta­tive pres­ence of free WiFi on 13 PTSC bus­es.

"And this is just the be­gin­ning," Min­is­ter Im­bert promised, be­fore putting a rather con­trar­i­an full stop to the en­tire para­graph head­ed "In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy" in the bud­get.

Be­yond that, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter switched rather de­ci­sive­ly from giveth to taketh away.The lap­tops be­ing pur­chased for schools un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion will, he said, "re­main the prop­er­ty of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion."

Ex­cept that the lap­tops is­sued over the four years of the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion are al­so the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry's prop­er­ty as spec­i­fied un­der the con­tract gov­ern­ing their use.

What Mr Im­bert prob­a­bly meant is that the com­put­ers would be more de­ci­sive­ly re­main un­der the con­trol of the Min­istry, since they would not be al­lowed to leave any school's com­pound.

The Min­is­ter is cor­rect to note that the pre­vi­ous pro­gramme was im­ple­ment­ed with more em­pha­sis on showy dis­tri­b­u­tions than on se­ri­ous link­ages be­tween class­room, dig­i­tal de­vice and teacher, but I can't help but feel that re­duc­ing ac­cess to a com­put­er from 24 hours to what's like­ly to turn out to be less than five is a fun­da­men­tal­ly bad idea.

The Bring Your Own De­vice pol­i­cy for CSEC and CAPE stu­dents al­so holds the dark promise of am­pli­fy­ing the di­vide be­tween haves and have-nots if it isn't man­aged care­ful­ly.

Per­haps the promised ICT Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, ICT in Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­i­cy, cur­ricu­lum re­form and teacher train­ing will make a crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence in this re­freshed im­ple­men­ta­tion of the lap­tops in schools ini­tia­tive.

The sev­en per cent on­line pur­chase tax be­gins on Oc­to­ber 20 on the ba­sis that peo­ple who shop on­line "have more dis­pos­able in­come."

That's go­ing to sting SMEs who source items us­ing those chan­nels and tech­nol­o­gy pur­chasers specif­i­cal­ly, who gen­er­al­ly de­mand a much wider range of prod­uct op­tions in small­er quan­ti­ties than lo­cal sup­pli­ers can re­li­ably or prof­itably stock.

These are mea­sures pitched at the prover­bial Joe Pub­lic, but there's pre­cious lit­tle for Joe Geek.The bud­get state­ment tends to be a top-lev­el job of show­man­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly in an econ­o­my that's hurt­ing, high­light­ing the big bite items and the ef­forts at gov­ern­ment gen­eros­i­ty.

The re­al in­for­ma­tion about the fis­cal plan for the PNM's sec­ond year in the eco­nom­ic dri­ver's seat is to be found in the sup­ple­men­tal doc­u­ments, specif­i­cal­ly the State En­ter­pris­es In­vest­ment Pro­gramme plan for 2017

The on­ly vis­i­ble out­line for tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment hinges on the mor­tal­ly wound­ed eTeck Tamana In­tech Park at Waller­field.The project oc­cu­pies 1,100 acres of land, but hasn't de­clared its flag­ship build­ing com­plete, de­spite spend­ing on the project to the tune of $1 bil­lion as of 2012.

The gov­ern­ment is now plan­ning pre­ven­tive main­te­nance and on­go­ing re­pairs to the build­ing at Tamana, which cur­rent­ly hous­es eTeck's head of­fice at a cost of $4.8 mil­lion with not a word about the tech­nol­o­gy park.

The com­pa­ny, cre­at­ed as the cut­ting edge of tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment in T&T, is now a more dif­fuse agency in­volved in ho­tel man­age­ment, "sec­tor de­vel­op­ment" and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion with a "new en­er­getic, vi­sion­ary role in the de­vel­op­ment of mod­ern eco­nom­ic zones."

In pur­suit of that ad­mirably un­clear busi­ness propo­si­tion, $2.8 mil­lion has been set aside for a cus­tomer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment so­lu­tion and the pro­cure­ment of com­put­er hard­ware in 2017.

Those eco­nom­ic zones will have to be sit­ed care­ful­ly, be­cause the gov­ern­ment al­so in­tends to sell off half of the in­dus­tri­al es­tates cur­rent­ly be­ing man­aged by eTeck in or­der to raise $500 mil­lion in the com­ing year.

You will, in short, find noth­ing imag­i­na­tive, for­ward-look­ing or even par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing re­gard­ing tech­nol­o­gy in ei­ther the for­mal bud­get state­ment or the more de­tailed State En­ter­pris­es In­vest­ment Pro­gramme doc­u­ment for 2017.

And that's far more trou­bling than a bud­get that's based on a six bil­lion dol­lar deficit.