Budget 2024 – A blast from the past

Paolo Kernahan

This budget, like others before it and those still to come, was just a bran tub of disparate elements adrift in open space. There were no linkages to build a way forward.

It was also the kind of bran tub that was mostly sawdust.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert spoke for about four hours. In all that time, there was no clear sense of how the proposed expenditure would strategically rally the varied sectors of the economy to stimulate equitable growth.

Sure, the budget document had the word "diversification" in the title. It was, however, absent from the substance of the presentation. This is like stamping "organic" on a pack of cigarettes.

Moreover, this budget presentation, which is supposed to be the fiscal expression of a vision for development, was a straight-up party manifesto. As the PNM heads for what will likely be a fifth term in office in 2025, the government was keen to dangle the baubles of benevolence in front of the public – back pay for public servants, a one-time payment of $4,000 for retirees, a $1,000 book grant, a $3 increase in the minimum wage – who can object to any of that?

The problem is, in a deficit-financed economy largely on life support through government spending, what impact will these measures have?

For example, what's the point of an incentive programme for the repair and upgrade of tourism accommodation properties if our marketing remains sub-par and poorly targeted? The entire national tourism marketing apparatus is pitched, for the most part, at the domestic market.

How much more disposable income will the new minimum wage put in people's pockets when rising household inflation makes a mockery of that spare change? Seemingly every week, basic goods go up by as much as $3. What you don't lose at the grocery, you haemorrhage at the gas pump and everywhere else. You can also add increased electricity rates to the basket of rising costs.

The minister trilled about economic growth in 2023. The IMF was betting on 2.5 per cent for 2022, but according to the CSO, that figure came in at 1.5 per cent. What happened between then and now to validate Imbert's rose-tinted depiction?

Let's look beyond the numbers for a moment. About two and a half years ago, the Nur-E-Islam mosque in El Socorro started preparing meals for the homeless and needy in the community. What started at 150 meals has ballooned to 300. According to former local government counsellor and community activist Safraz Ali, demand for the service is only growing.

It's not just the homeless and unemployed. He says even working people have come to rely on the once-weekly hearty meal. Ali has spoken to single mothers who must choose between paying rent and eating. Incomes can't keep pace with rising costs.

This story is repeated across all of Imbert's "rebounding economy." Still, the government is feverishly papering over the cracks when what's needed is an intelligent, insightful strategy to get us out of this interminable rut.

Several agents of the government were dispatched to sell Imbert's opus. In different panel discussions spread across the media the message was repeated: We could have done more were it not for the Opposition. Whether it was the fight against crime or getting job-growing prospects off the ground, the government couldn't get support.

After eight years in office, they're still peddling the narrative of an insidious UNC hobbling the ambitions of an otherwise industrious, innovative administration.

Even so, Imbert still managed to "turn the economy around" yet again.

The government boasts of a successful bond issue which is, at its core, borrowing money to repay borrowed money to prop up an illusory economy. If the government was doing that as an individual just trying to stay afloat out on the streets, the government would have had its kneecaps broken already.

All of this is being done amid falling oil and gas prices and ever-shrinking foreign-exchange earnings and reserves.

Perhaps the most breathtaking utterance by the minister was this: "We intend to move aggressively to develop strategies to increase the repatriation of foreign exchange earned overseas by local and foreign businesses operating in TT." What on earth does that mean?

Ultimately, budget 2024 was like budgets of dusty yore – full of bluster and the other B-word. This wasn't a flight plan to take the country forward. It's just another holding pattern.

What happens when the gas runs out completely is fairly predictable.