The next three years are ex­pect­ed to be an ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od and will be char­ac­terised by “mar­ket volatil­i­ty, a low en­er­gy and com­mod­i­ty price regime, and con­se­quent­ly re­duced coun­try rev­enues and for­eign ex­change,” Phase Two of the Roadmap for T&T re­port has stat­ed.

It not­ed that the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has been dis­as­trous with bil­lions of dol­lars lost and a re­duc­tion on up to 50 per­cent in rev­enue in some sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

And, as such, the coun­try needs to find ways to earn rev­enue and cut ex­pen­di­ture to deal with this sit­u­a­tion.

“In this re­spect, con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to ur­gent en­gage­ment of the gas val­ue chain re­cal­i­bra­tion to op­ti­mise gas and com­mod­i­ty out­put in the short term,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port said that tar­get­ed rev­enue can be set at $2 bil­lion for im­proved re­turns from the gas val­ue chain.

An ad­di­tion­al $1.5 bil­lion can al­so be tar­get­ed through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax and ef­fec­tive­ly widen­ing the tax net to pro­vide more eq­ui­table and ef­fec­tive meth­ods of tax col­lec­tion, it stat­ed.

The re­port al­so called for:

• Re­duc­tion in the lev­el of im­ports, be­gin­ning with a re­duc­tion of the Food Im­port bill through the pro­posed agri­cul­ture stim­u­lus. (Tar­get­ed re­duc­tion is $2 bil­lion by 2022)

• Ac­cel­er­at­ed em­ploy­ment of tar­get­ed PPP arrange­ments for in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment as well as lever­ag­ing of idle ca­pac­i­ty in the pub­lic sec­tor. Spon­sored parks eg E-id­cot, Eteck etc must be ful­ly ac­ti­vat­ed. (The lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty aimed at here could be $1.5 bil­lion)

• In­crease of non-en­er­gy earn­ings us­ing the Ex­im Bank, Ex­porTT and oth­er pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships. (The earn­ings tar­get here could be $1 bil­lion

• Ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of trans­fers and sub­si­dies pred­i­cat­ed on a unique e iden­ti­ty sys­tem to make trans­fers and sub­si­dies more ef­fi­cient while pro­tect­ing the vul­ner­a­ble and to make state-owned en­ter­pris­es more self-suf­fi­cient whilst care­ful­ly con­sid­er­ing a di­vest­ment pro­gramme for non-core as­sets (Con­ser­v­a­tive­ly $1.5 bil­lion)

• Fo­cus on in­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship to stim­u­late the mi­cro and SME sec­tor tar­get­ing tra­di­tion­al and non-tra­di­tion­al ar­eas. This is the defin­ing mo­ment to change pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els and cul­ture to em­brace dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, to think, re-en­gi­neer and act trans­for­ma­tive­ly and ex­e­cute dif­fer­ent­ly. This trans­for­ma­tion must be an­chored in key ar­eas of the pub­lic sec­tor led by a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team re­port­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the re­port read.

It added, “The stark re­al­i­ty is that the re­quired liq­uid­i­ty lev­els are sim­ply not avail­able and debt head­room has sig­nif­i­cant­ly di­min­ished. This means that ‘pol­i­cy choic­es have to be made’ to tran­si­tion the coun­try out of a long-term po­ten­tial debt trap and sys­temic in­ter-gen­er­a­tional pover­ty.”

The com­mit­tee stat­ed that the choic­es have to be clear­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed in next week’s na­tion­al bud­get in a “frank and forth­right con­ver­sa­tion with the pop­u­la­tion.”

“This is a defin­ing mo­ment in which a health pan­dem­ic must not be al­lowed to be­come an ex­tend­ed eco­nom­ic pan­dem­ic but rather be­comes a pil­lar for new be­hav­iour and long-term sus­tain­able growth,” it stat­ed.

The re­port posit­ed that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the un­prece­dent­ed col­lapse in en­er­gy prices ear­li­er in the year “ef­fec­tive­ly changed the tra­jec­to­ry of the T&T econ­o­my.”

“COVID-19 dealt a mon­u­men­tal blow both to the de­mand and the sup­ply sides of the econ­o­my, caus­ing an­nu­alised rev­enue loss­es of more than 50 per cent in some sec­tors. The pre­cip­i­tous de­cline in en­er­gy prices trans­lat­ed in­to sharply re­duced gov­ern­ment rev­enues and for­eign ex­change in­flows with ad­verse con­se­quences for our cash flows, fis­cal bal­ances, coun­try rat­ings and de­vel­op­men­tal pol­i­cy op­tions,” it stat­ed.

“Eco­nom­ic loss­es are in the or­der of bil­lions of dol­lars and will have a mul­ti-year over­hang of at least two to three years’ du­ra­tion, con­ser­v­a­tive­ly,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port stat­ed that a re­build­ing of the econ­o­my must be ini­ti­at­ed mak­ing it more re­silient in the face of pos­si­ble fu­ture shocks.

“In oth­er words, the lega­cy of COVID-19 for T&T must be a new econ­o­my and a new so­ci­ety. This Phase 2 Re­port be­gins with the per­cep­tion of the econ­o­my, not as an en­gine to give us the stan­dard of liv­ing we aim for, but as a set of re­la­tion­ships among in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions as we seek to im­prove and se­cure our stan­dard of liv­ing,” it stat­ed.

The re­port said what this means is that the com­mit­tee ac­cepts the Arthur Lewis dic­tum that good eco­nom­ics be­gins with a con­cern for the con­di­tions of life un­der which peo­ple live. In oth­er words, the re­port ac­knowl­edges that eco­nom­ics and the pol­i­cy frame­work that comes with it are re­al­ly about peo­ple and about peo­ple’s lives first and fore­most.

In this con­text it ar­gued that the re­port sup­ports the stance of the lead­er­ship of the coun­try that the re­sponse to COVID-19 needs to be a whole of-coun­try re­sponse and not mere­ly a gov­ern­ment re­sponse.

“Whether it is the need to prop­er­ly sup­port the vul­ner­a­ble or to trans­form the econ­o­my, there will be clear roles for the pri­vate sec­tor as well as civ­il so­ci­ety. Leav­ing no one be­hind is some­thing we have to do to­geth­er,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port added that even as we move to get the econ­o­my back on­to a sus­tain­able track of de­vel­op­ment, we have to en­sure that the so­cial en­vi­ron­ment with­in which the re­quired changes must take place is one char­ac­terised by co­he­sion and by a per­cep­ti­ble sense of eq­ui­ty.

“Put an­oth­er way, the en­vi­ron­ment cre­at­ed must be one that ob­vi­ates so­cial ten­sion and builds har­mo­ny. This means that so­cial and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy must be geared to­wards re­mov­ing all the sys­temic fac­tors that keep some groups in the so­ci­ety from pro­gress­ing, and must cre­ate a frame­work of op­por­tu­ni­ty, which will give every cit­i­zen or res­i­dent of the coun­try the hope that he or she stands a good chance of hav­ing a bet­ter life in the fu­ture,” it stat­ed.

The com­mit­tee said in the wake of COVID-19 it will be rec­om­mend­ing the much-abridged vi­sion state­ment:

“To be a re­silient and pros­per­ous na­tion built on the pil­lars of har­mo­ny, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­ge­nu­ity.”