ANOTHER financial year ends on September 30 for Trinidad and Toba-go—budget time—with every citizen patiently waiting to win. Budget time is also when the round-table analysts, university scholars, media, and commentators gather again to pontificate on what should be done or what should not be done to make T&T great again.
Speaking with reporters at last Friday’s parliamentary sitting, the Prime Minister indicated that T&T will incur another deficit, given the wide gap between the country’s revenue and expenditure. Please permit me to respond to the above statements and, at the same time, offer some ideas that Madam Prime Minister 2.0 could consider in this upcoming budget.
T&T has been running deficit budgets since fiscal 2009, with the exception of fiscal 2010 and 2022. With all due respect, Madam Prime Minister 2.0, while you were in Opposition for ten years, you would have been well aware of the decli-ning financial health of T&T as members of the Opposition. Enough time to learn from the PNM’s (People’s National Movement’s) economic and leadership mistakes.
Therefore, you campaigned on policies, plans and the intellectual capacity to fix T&T expeditiously if elected. So why has there been such a delay in announcing the budget date? In fact, when the PNM took office on September 7, 2015, a budget was presented by October 5. Furthermore, unlike the PNM, please do not bore us with another five-hour-long budget speech that is really a campaign speech in Parliament.
With adjusted general Government debt totalling $140.5 billion, fiscal deficit of $6,624.10 as at December 31, 2024, respectively and adjusted general Government debt accounting for 80% of GDP (Central Bank Data Centre), I humbly recommend that you address policies that gradually reduce the fiscal deficit and public debt.
Address the bread-and-butter issues such as reducing food prices, building materials, crime, and unemployment in the short term, while building a research/development and recycling culture in the medium to long term. Please do not incur excessive debt to fulfil campaign promises. Continuous deficit financing and persistently high public debt could undermine investor/lender confidence, reduce cash flow, and impact generational wealth. Everybody must win.
Madam Prime Minister 2.0, it is clear that if T&T achieves its own food indepen-dence, this can reduce the food import bill and ease foreign exchange demand. I think that most farmers are mainly concerned with access roads, firearms to protect their livestock or crops, land security, and a subsidy on chemicals/livestock feed.
I recommend State land lease reform, where five or ten-acre parcels could be given to registered or unregistered farmers and short contracts be made based on production metrics; and if not met, another farmer be given the chance. Firearms could be given to qualified farmers in their respective areas and they could undertake patrols, with one assigned police officer as supervision.
The Government could subsidise expensive chemicals or feed, so smaller farmers could pay their bills and still be sustainable financially. Finally, medium-to-long-term initiatives could look at State-assisted greenhouse farming for the rainy season, and research in all-year crop development such as lemons, avocados, oranges, etc.
In my humble opinion, programmes such as CEPEP/URP and employment schemes under local corporations, WASA, State boards, and HDC were created theoretically with good intentions, but were really voting and party loyalist banks. These arrangements, corrupted by party politics, have left 30,000 to 40,000 unemployed; such is the citizens’ burden of party politics. But shutting them down citing corruption issues is good “politics”? I do hope perpetrators will be brought to justice.
Under your new CEPEP/URP 2.0, I suggest a forensic auditing team from the private sector, consisting of accountants, attorneys, risk/compliance experts, and people with finance and management skills to audit these programmes, as well as the corporations, every quarter, thus taking the load off the Auditor Gene-ral’s Department.
Finally, Madam Prime Minister 2.0, I recommend that research/development funds as a small percentage of GDP be made available to improve problem-sol-ving and creativity among the population. Innovation is crucial in competing globally. We need to chart a vision for T&T.
Jamaica has declared themselves a STEM island to foster innovation and drive economic growth. Estonia has named themselves e-Estonia, a leading country in e-technologies/ICT since 2000, with focus on the Healthcare 4.0 model. Even US President Donald Trump held a dinner with the country’s tech giants to forge innovation to build economic growth. In T&T, who are the tech titans that the Government will call to innovate T&T? Investments in innovation, modernisation reforms, reducing State dependency, and honest and agile leadership will allow T&T to slowly rebound. Madam Prime Minister 2.0, don’t fight the business sector—you need to partner with them.
So, I hope to win with this budget.
Jairzinho Rigsby
